;';M^;)^^Mi:H:a;n:i!^!;IM^§i?^i|^ 




/ 


,•0- ^s 
0^- ~"' 


., ^ ' 


* » 




N ,; ^ 


••. v^^ 


■'t.. ,. 






•§>--.. 

■^ ^ 




^ x'.^" 








.0' "b ' 




" \ 








s, ./. 




%^''^ 




'^. 






-..# 


^ ^- 




■.^'' 


■\ 


-V 


*^% 


'- ' II , 


, . * /\ 






0, ■'/, 




' ' .-. <^. 


a\ 






■ ' ', 




', V 


.■^■ 










^ '-<-' 


A^ 






-00^ 




















>'^-;-. 






// 










. 


y 


'K<. 


'^,. ^ » 


\ 

1 ^ " 


v^^* 


V ■■■■ 




r - 




\' 






, "'J' 


.^^' 


/ 






.s 


% 








.^-^•" 


-<■ 


' 






•^^ 




^ 


■ (.1 ■ 


;, 


•N. \ 


1 W : 


' ^ 






cS^'o' • 


k 

- ^ -1 






./ 






^ 


-^t.. 


v^^ 






j> 






J \ 




= 


xO 


^^. 



<^' V '^, ■.-. ■■^r C> •^'' -^ 

v.- ^<> ■^ ■>' ^: 

. '<^ ■ ■ " A^ .0^0 ,, •!■ 



^i<, 

'-^^r- 


<^ 


>• 


%4 


/ 




/. *~ .\ 


■^''^'. 




' /% 


/ 


. . V 




' ^.. 


ix 






x^^^. -' 






•A 


-'S. 


' 9 1 ^ ' 



'^x. .X^ 
A 






^ -^ ' .^' -/^^ 






.J >. 



* .A 



' -^ -f" '^^^ A^ 






^V N^ 






\ . . . . .\ 



v - ,< •^ .V - 



ct-. 






^^- C^ 



->, '. 






x\^ 



.^^^ 



,0 c. 



\ 



0^ 



■I- 

r ■ 






.^-^' 



,. ,vV 



-S^^-i^. 



0> ^C. 



^>. 



-->, 



nV^ 



.0 o . 



'J- .\ 



c\^ 



, \^ 



•^y. ^ 



vO 



^/^^ 



\V 



x^' -V._ 



A^^' 



vX^-^' 



^\^ 









<a. V 






•^/. 




J /.1-o-Ol '^y^J'jZ-o- ^<xc IaL ru^TT^J ^ oy<-^ of yh^ |-vrocjvc^i>_/o_^ 






MEMOIE 



OF 



THE LIFE OE 



JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



BY 



JOSIAH QUINCY, LL. D. 



Justum et tenaceiu propositi virum, 
Non civium ardor prava jiibentium, 
Non vultus instantis tjTanni, 
Meuto quatit solida. 



BOSTON: 

:R0SBY, NICHOLS, LEE AND COMPANY. 

1 8 G (J . 







Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by 

I'lIILLIPS, SAMPSON & CO., 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the District of Massachusetts. 



nOBAU'f a UOBDINS, 
Now Bugl^nd Typo anj Stereotype Foundcry, 



STo 

THE PRESIDENT AND MEMBERS 

F T H E 

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

PREPABED AT T II KIR BKyUKST, 

IS 

BESPECTFTJLLT DEDICATED, 

BY 

THEIR ASSOCIATE, 

JOSIAH QUINCT. 

Boston, June 1, 1858. 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



The ensuing Memoir comprises the most important 
events in the life of a statesman second to none of his 
contemporaries in laborious and faithful devotion to the 
service of his country. 

The light attempted to be thrown on his course has 
been derived from personal acquaintance, from his public 
works, and from authentic unpuljlished materials. 

The chief endeavor has been to render him the 

expositor of his own motives, principles, and character, 

without fear or favor, — in the spirit neither of criticism 

or eulogy. 

JOSIAII QUINCT. 

Boston, June 1, 1858. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER I. 

PAOB 
BIRTH. EDUCATION. RESIDENCE IN EUROPE. AT COLLEGE. AT 

THE BAR. POLITICAL ESSAYS. MINISTER AT THE HAGUE AT 

BERLIN. RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES, 1 

CHAPTER II. 

RESIDENCE IN BOSTON. RETURNS TO THE BAR. ELECTED TO THE 

SENATE OF MASSACHUSETTS TO THE SENATE 01" THE UNITED STATES. 

HIS COURSE RELATIVE TO THE ATTACK OF THE LEOPARD ON THE 

CHESAPEAKE. RESIGNS HIS SEAT AS SENATOR OF THE UNITED 

STATES. APPOINTED MINISTER TO RUSSIA. FINAL SEPARATION 

FROM THE FEDERAL PARTV, 25 

CHAPTER III. 

VOYAGE. ARRIVAL AT ST. PETERSBURG. PRESENTATION TO THE 

EMPEROR. RESIDENCE AT THE IMPERIAL COURT. DIPLOMATIC IN- 
TERVIEWS. PRIVATE STUDIES. APPOINTED ONE OF THE COMMIS- 
SIONERS TO TREAT FOR PEACE WITH GREAT BRITAIN. LEAVES 

RUSSIA, 44 

CHAPTER IV. 

RESIDENCE AT GHENT AT PARIS IN LONDON. PRESENTATION TO 

THE PRINCE REGENT. NEGOTIATION WITH LORD CASTLEREAGH. 

APPOINTED SECRETARY OF STATE. LEAVES ENGLAND, .... 59 



VIII CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER V. 

FIRST TERM OF MR. MOXROe's ADMINISTRATION. — STATE OF PARTIES. 
— SEMINOLE WAR. — TAKING OF PENSACOLA. — NEGOTIATION WITH 
SPAIN. — PURCUASE OF TUE FLORIDAS. — COLONIZATION SOCIETY.— 
THE ADMISSION OF UISSOLRI INTO THE UNION, "7 

CHAPTER VI. 

SECOND TERM OF MONROr's PRESIDENCY. — STATE OF PARTIES. — RE- 
PORT OX AVEIGHTS AND MEASURES. — PROCEEDINGS AT GHENT VIN- 
DICATED. — VOTES WHEN HE WAS A MEMBER OF THE SENATE OF 
TEE UNITED STATES DEFENDED. — INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE.— 
CONTESTS OF PARTIES. — ELECTED PRESIDENT OF TUE UNITED STATES, 120 

CHAPTER VII. 

ADMINISTRATION AS PRESIDENT. - POLICY. - RECOMMENDATIONS TO 
CONGRESS. — PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO OFFICIAL APPOINTMENTS AND 
REMOVALS. — COURSE IN ELECTION CONTESTS. — TERMINATION OF 
HIS PRESIDENCY, , 

CHAPTER VIII. 

PLRSUITS OF MR. ADAMS IN RETIREMENT. — ELECTED TO CONGRESS — 
PARTIES AND THEIR PROCEEDINGS. — HIS COURSE IN RESPECT OF 
THEM. — HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION AND THAT OF HIS SUCCESSOR 
COMPARED. -REPORT ON MANUFACTURES AND THE BANK OF THE 
UNITED STATES. -REFUSAL TO VOTE, AND CONSEQUENT PROCEED- 
INGS. — SPEECH AND REPORT ON THE MODIFICATION OF THE TARIFF 

AND SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION l-c 

' 1/0 

CHAPTER IX. 

INFLUENCE OF MILITARY SUCCESS. - POLICY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 
— MR. ADAMS' SPEECH ON THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS FROM 
THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. - HIS OPINIONS ON FREE- 
MASONRY AND TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES. — EULOGY ON WILLIAM WIRT.— 
ORATION ON TUE LIFE AND CUARACTER OF LAFAYETTE. - HIS COURSE 
ON ABOLITION PETITIONS - ON INTERFERENCE WITH THE INSTITU- 
TION OF SLAVERY — ON THE POLICY RELATIVE TO THE PUBLIC 
LANDS. — SPEECH ON DISTRIBUTING RATIONS TO FUGITIVES FROM 
INDIAN HOSTILITIES -ON WAR WITU MEXICO. - EULOGY OV J VMES 
MADISON. — HIS COURSE ON A PETITION PURPORTING TO BE FROM 
SLAVES. — FIRST REPORT ON JAMES SMITUSOn's BEQUEST, . . .OJC 



CONTENTS. tX 



CHAPTER X 



S TO THE INIlAIilTANTS OF 
ATPLICATION OF THE SMITH- 



MARTIN VAN BUREN PRESIDENT OF THE INITED STATES. MR. ADAMS 

SPEECH ON THE CLAIMS OF THE DEPOSIT BANKS. HIS LETTER ON 

BOOKS fOR UNIVERSAL READING. — ORATION AT NEWBURYPORT. — 
SPEECH ON THE RIGHT OF PETITION. -J- LETTER TO THE MASSACHC 

SETTS ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. ADDR 

niS DISTRICT. HIS VIEWS AS TO THI 

SONIAN FUND. HIS INTEREST IN TH 3 SCIENCE/ OF ASTRONOMY. 

LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE (ifS AN /STROSOMICAL OBSERV- 
ATORY. LETTER ON THE ABOLITION (i(,t_SK:\VERY IN THE DISTRICT 

OF COLUMBIA. RESOLUTIONS FOR THE LIMITING OF HEREDITARY 

SLAVERY. DISCOURSE BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 

ADDRESS ON THE SUBJECT OF EDUCATION. REMARKS ON PHRE- 
NOLOGY ON THE LICENSE LAW OF MASSACHUSETTS. HE ORGAN- 
IZES THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 2G8 



CHAPTER XI. 

SECOND REPORT ON' THE SMITHSONIAN FUND. HIS SPEECH ON A BILL 

FOR INSURING A MORE FAITHFUL EXECUTION OF THE LAWS RELAT- 
ING TO THE COLLECTION OF DUTIES ON IMPORTS. REMARKS ON 

THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN EXTENSIVE SERIES OF MAGNETICAL AND 

METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON ITINERANT ELECTIONEERIN(i 

ON ABUSES IN RESPECT TO THE NAVY FUND ON THE POLITI- 
CAL INFLUENCES OF THE TIME — UN THE ORIGIN AND RESULTS OF 
THE FLORIDA WAR. HIS Df;NUNCIAT10N OF DUELLING. HIS ARGU- 
MENT IN THE SUPREME COURT ON bEHALF OF AFRICANS CAPTURED 

302 



CHAPTER XII. 

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. HIS 

DEATH. VICE-PRESIDENT JOHN TVLER SUCCEEDS. REMARKS OF 

MR. ADAMS ON THE OCCASION. HIS SPEECH ON THE CASE OF 

ALEXANDER m'lEOD. HIS VIKWS CONCERNING COMMONPLACE BOOKS. 

HIS LECTURE ON CHINA AND CHINESE COMMERCE. REMARKS ON 

THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, AND HIS DUTY IN RELATION TO IT. 

HIS PRESENTATION OF A PETITION FOR THE DISSOLUTION OF THE 

UNION, AND THE VOTE TO CENSURE HIM Fi)R DOING IT. HIS 

THIRD REPORT ON MR. SMITIISOn's BF.QUEST. HIS SPEECH ON THE 

MISSION TO MEXICO, 



i CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER XIII. 

REPORT ON PRESIDENT TYLER's APPROVAL, WITH OBJECTIONS, OF THE 

BILL FOR THE APPORTIONMENT OF REPRESENTATIVES. REPORT ON 

HIS VETO OF THE BILL TO PROVIDE A REVENUE FROM IMPORTS. 

LECTURE ON THE SOCIAL COMPACT, AND THE THEORIES OF FILMER, 

HOBEES, SYDNEY, AND LOCKE. ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS ON 

THE POLICY OF PRESIDENT TYLER's ADMINISTRATION. ADDRESS TO 

THE NORFOLK COUNTY TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. DISCOURSE ON THE 

NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY OF 1643. LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF 

BANGOR ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION. ORATION ON LAYING THE 

CORNER-STONE OF THE CINCINNATI OBSERVATORY, 3G4 

CHAPTER XIV. 

REPORT ON THE RESOLVES OF THE LEGISLATURE OF MASSACHUSETTS 
PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 

STATES IN EFFECT TO ABOLISH A REPRESENTATION FOR SLAVES. 

FOURTH REPORT ON JAMES SMITHSOn's BEQUEST. INFLUENCE OF 

MR. ADAMS ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL OBSERV- 
ATORY AND THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. GENERAL JACKSON's 

CHARGE THAT THE RIO GRANDE MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBTAINED, UNDER 
THE SPANISH TREATY, AS A BOUNDARY FOR THE UNITED STATES, 
REiTTED. ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS AT WEYMOUTH. RE- 
MARKS ON THE RETROCESSION OF ALEXANDRIA TO VIRGINIA. HIS 

PARALYSIS. RECEPTION BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

HIS DEATH. FUNERAL UONORS. — TRIHUTE TO HIS MEMORY, . . 409 



]SI E M I R 

OF 

JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



CHAPTER I. 

BIKTtl. EDUCATION. RESIDENCE IN EUROPE. — AT COLLEGE. AT THE 

BAR. POLITICAL ESSAYS. MINISTER AT THE HAGUE AT BERLIN. 

RETURN TO THE UNITED STATES. 

John Quixcy Adams, son of John and Abigail 
Adams, was born on the 11th of July, 1767, in the 
North Parish of Braintree, Massachusetts — since incor- 
porated as the town of Quincy. The lives and char- 
acters of his parents, intimately associated with the 
history of the American Revolution, have been 
already ably and faithfully ilkistrated.* 

The origin of his name was thus stated by himself: 
"My great-grandfather, John Quincy,! was dying 
when I was baptized, and his daughter, my grand- 
mother, requested I might receive his name. This 
fact, recorded by my father at the time, is not with- 
out a moral to my heart, and has connected with that 

* See "Letters of Mrs. Adams, with an Introductory Memoir," and "The 
Worlis of John Adams, Second President of the United States, with a Life of 
the Author," by their grandson, Charles Francis Adams. 

t John Quincy represented the town of Braintree in the colonial legislature 
forty years, and long held the office of speaker. 
1 



A MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

portion of my name a charm of mingled sensibility 
and devotion. It was filial tenderness that gave the 
name — it was the name of one j^assing from earth to 
immortality. These have been, through life, perpet^ 
ual admonitions to do nothing unworthy of it." 

At Braintree his mother watched over his childhood. 
At the village school he learned the rudiments of the 
English language. In after life he often playfully 
boasted that the dame who taught him "to spell flat- 
tered him into learning his letters by telling him he 
would prove a scholar. The notes and habits of the 
birds and wild animals of the vicinity early excited 
his attention, and led him to look on nature with a 
lover's eye, creating an attachment to the home of 
his childhood, which time strengthened. Many years 
afterwards, when residing in Europe, he wrote : 
"Penn's Hill and Braintree North Common Rocks 
never looked and never felt to me like any other hill 
or any other rocks ; because every rock and every 
pebble upon them associates itself with the first con- 
sciousness of my existence. If there is a Bostonian 
who ever sailed from his own harbor for distant lands, 
or returned to it from them, without feelings, at the 
sight of the Blue Hills, which he is unable to express, 
his heart is differently constituted from mine." 

These local attachments were indissolubly associated 
with the events of the American Revolution, and with 
the patriotic principles instilled by his mother. Stand- 
ing Avith her on the summit of Penn's Hill, he heard 
the cannon booming from the battle of Bunker's Hill, 
and saw the smoke and flames of burninf]^ Charlestown. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 3 

Durino- the siege of Boston he often climbed the same 
eminence alone, to watch the shells and rockets thrown 
by the American army. 

With a mind prematurely developed and cultivated 
by the influence of the characters of his parents and 
the stirring events of that period, he embarked, at 
the age of eleven years, in February, 1778, from the 
shore of his native town, with his father, in a small 
boat, which conveyed them to a ship in Nantasket 
Roads, bound for Europe. John Adams had been 
associated in a commission with Benjamin Franklin 
and Arthur Lee, as plenipotentiary to the Court of 
France. After residing in Paris until June, 1779, 
he returned to America, accompanied by his son. 
Being immediately appointed, by Congress, minister 
plenipotentiary to negotiate a treaty of peace and 
commerce with Great Britain, they both returned 
together to France in November, taking passage in a 
French frigate. On this his second voyage to Europe, 
young Adams began a diary, which, with few inter- 
missions, he continued through life. While in Paris 
he resumed the study of the ancient and modern lan- 
guages, which had been interrupted by his return to 
America. 

In July, 1780, John Adams having been appointed 
ambassador to the Netherlands, his son was removed 
from the schools of Paris to those of Amsterdam, and 
subsequently to the University of Leyden. There he 
pursued his studies until July, 1781, when, in his 
fourteenth year, he was selected by Francis Dana, 
minister plenipotentiary from the United States to the 



4 MExMOIR OF JOHN QUIxNCY ADAMS. 

Eussian court, as his private secretary, and accom- 
panied him through Germany to St. Petersburg. 
Having satisfactorily discharged his official duties, and 
pursued his Latin, German, and French studies, with 
a general course of English history, until September, 
1782, he left St. Petersburg for Stockholm, where 
he passed the winter. In the ensuing spring, after 
travelling through the interior of Sweden, and visiting 
Copenhagen and Hamburg, he joined his father at 
the Hague, and accompanied him to Paris. They 
travelled leisurely, forming an acquaintance with 
eminent men on their route, and examining archi- 
tectural remains, the paintings of the great Flemish 
masters, and all the treasures of the fine arts, in the 
countries through which they passed. In Paris, young 
Adams was present at the signing of the treaty of 
peace in 1783, and was admitted into the society of 
Franklin, Jefferson, Jay, Barclay, Hartley, the Abbe 
Mably, and many other eminent statesmen and lite- 
rary men. After passing a few months in England, 
with his father, he returned to Paris, and resumed his 
studies, which he continued until May, 1785, when he 
embarked for the United States. This return to his 
own country caused a mental struggle, in which his 
judgment controlled his inclination. His father had 
just been appointed minister at the Court of Great 
Britain, and, as one of his family, it would have been 
to him a high gratification to reside in England. His 
feelings and views on the occasion he thus expressed : 
"I have been seven years travelling in Europe, 
seeing the world, and in its society. If I return to 



MEMOIR OP JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 5 

the United States, I must be subject, one or two ye.irs, 
to the rules of a college, pass three more in the tedi- 
ous study of the law, before I can hope to bring 
myself into professional notice. The prospect is dis- 
couraging. If I accompany my father to London, my 
satisfaction would possibly be greater than by return- 
ing to the United States ; but I shall loiter away my 
precious time, and not go home until I am forced to it. 
My father has been all his lifetime occupied ])y the 
interests of the public. His own fortune has suffered. 
His children must provide for themselves. I am deter- 
mined to get my own living, and to be dependent 
upon no one. With a tolerable share of common 
sense, I hope, in America, to be independent and free. 
Eather than live otherwise, I would wish to die before 
my time." 

In this spirit the tempting prospects in Europe were 
abandoned, and he returned to the United States, to 
submit to the rules, and to join, w^ith a submissive 
temper, the comparatively uninteresting associations, 
of college life. After reviewing his studies under an 
instructor, he entered, in March, 1786, the junior 
class of Harvard University. Diligence and punc- 
tual fulfilment of every prescribed duty, the ad- 
vantages he had previously enjoyed, and his exem- 
plary compliance with the rules of the seminary, 
secured to him a high standing in his class, which 
none were disposed to controvert. Here his active 
and thoughtful mind was prepared for those scenes 
in future life in which he could not but feel he was 
destined to take part. Entering into all the literary 



4 



6 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

and social circles of the college, he became popular 
among his classmates. By the government his con- 
duct and attainments were duly appreciated, which 
they manifested by bestowing upon him the second 
honor of his class at commencement ; a high distinc- 
tion, considering the short period he had been a mem- 
ber of the university. The oration he delivered when 
he graduated, in 1787, on the Importance of Public 
Taith to the Weil-Being of a Community, was printed 
and published ; a rare proof of general interest in a 
college exercise, which the adaptation of the subject 
to the times, and the talent it evinced, justified. 

After leaving, the university, ]\Ir. Adams passed 
three years in Newburyport as a student at law under 
the guidance of Theophilus Parsons, afterwards chief 
justice o^f Massachusetts. He was admitted to the 
bar in 1790, and immediately opened an office in Bos- 
ton. The ranks of his profession were crowded, 
the emoluments were small, and his competitors able! 
His letters feelingly express his anxiety to relieve his 
parents from contributing to his support. In No- 
vember, 1843, in an address to the bar of Cincinnati, 
Mr. Adams thus described the progress and termina- 
tion of his practice as a lawyer • — 

"I have been a member of your profession upwards of half 
a century. In the early period of my life, having- a father 
abroad, it was my fortune to travel in foreign countries ; still, 
under the impression which I first received from my mother' 
that in this country every man should have some trade, that 
trade which, by the advice of my parents and my own inclination, 
I chose, was the profession of the Law. After having- com- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. i 

pleted an education in which, perhaps, more tlian any other 
citizen of that time 1 had advantages, and which of course 
brought witli it the incumbent duty of manifesting by my life 
that those extraordinary advantages of education, secured to 
me by my father, had not been worthlessly bestowed, — on 
coming into life after such great advantages, and having the 
duty of selecting a profession, I chose that of the Bar. 1 
closed my education as a lawyer with one of the most eminent 
jurists of the age, — Theophilus Parsons, of Newburyport, at 
that time a practising lawyer, but subsequently chief justice 
of the commonwealth of Massachusetts. Under his instruc- 
tion and advice I closed my education, and commenced what 
I can hardly call the practice of the law in the city of Boston. 
"At that time, though I cannot say I was friendless, yet 
my circumstances were not independent. My father was then 
in a situation of great responsibility and notoriety in the gov- 
ernment of the United States. But he had been long absent 
from his own country, and still continued absent from that 
part of it to which he belonged, and of which I was a native. 
I went, therefore, as a volunteer, an adventurer, to Boston, as 
possibly many of you whom I now see before me may consider 
yourselves as having come to Cincinnati. I was without sup- 
port of any kind. I may say I w^as a stranger in that city, 
■ although almost a native of that spot. I say I can hardly call 
it practice, because for the space of one year from that time it- 
would be difficult for me to name any practice which I had to 
do. For two years, indeed, I can recall nothing in which I 
was engaged that may be termed practice, though during the 
second year there were some symptoms that by persevering 
patience practice might come in time. The third year I contin- 
ued this patience and perseverance, and, having little to do, 
occupied my time as well as I could in the study of those laws 
and institutions which I have since been called to admnnster. 
At the end of the third year I had obtained something which 
might be called practice. 

The fourth year I fouhd it swelling to such an extent that I 
felt no longer any concern as to my future destiny as a mem- 



8 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 

bcr of that profession. But in the midst of the fourth year 
by the will of the first President of the United States, with 
which the Senate was pleased to concur, I was selected 
for a station, not, perhaps, of more usefulness, but of greater 
consequence in the estimation of mankind, and sent from home 
on a mission to foreign parts. 

From that time, the fourth year after my admission to the 
bar of my native state, and the first year of my admission to 
the bar of the Supreme Court of the United States, I was 
deprived of the exercise of any further industry or labor at the 
bar by this distinction ; a distinction for which a previous 
education at the bar, if not an indispensable qualification, was 
at least a most useful appendage." * 

While waiting for professional employment, he was 
instinctively drawn into political discussions. Thomas 
Paine had just then published his "Rights of Man," for 
which Thomas Jefferson, then Secretary of State,' took 
upon himself to be sponsor, by publishing a letter 
expressing his extreme pleasure " that it is to be 
reprinted here, and that something is at length to be 
publicly said against the political heresies which have 
sprung up among us. I have no doubt our citizens 
will rally a second time round the standard of Common 
Sense." 

Notwithstanding the weight of Jefferson's charac- 
ter, and the strength of his recommendation, in June, 
1791, young Adams entered the lists against Paine 
and his pamphlet, which was in truth an encomium on 
the National Assembly of France, and a commentary 
on the rights of man, inferring questionable deduc- 
tions from unquestionable principles. In a series of 

*Sce jYilcs' Weekly Register, New Series, vol. xv., pp. 21S, 219. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. . 9 

essays, signed Publicola, published in the Columbian 
Centinel, he states and controverts successively the 
fundamental doctrines of Paine's work ; denies that 
*'vphatever a whole nation chooses to do it has a 
right to do," and maintains, in opposition, that 
"nations, no less than individuals, are subject to the 
eternal and immutable laws of justice and morality ; " 
declaring that Paine's doctrine annihilated the secu- 
rity of every man for his inalienable rights, and would 
lead in practice to a hideous despotism, concealed 
under the parti-colored garments of democracy. The 
truth of the views in these essays was soon made 
manifest by the destruction of the French constitu- 
tion, so lauded by Paine and Jefferson, the succeeding 
anarchy, the murder of the French monarch, and the 
establishment of a military despotism. 

In April, 1793, Great Britain declared war against 
France, then in the most violent frenzy of her revolu- 
tion. In this war, the feelings of the people of the 
United States were far from being neutral. The seeds 
of friendship for the one, and of enmity towards the 
other belligerent, which the Revolutionary War had 
plentifully scattered through the whole country, began 
everywhere to vegetate. Private cupidity openly 
advocated privateering upon the commerce of Great 
Britain, in aid of which commissions were issued 
under the authority of France. To counteract the 
apparent tendency of these popular passions, Mr. 
Adams published, also in the Centinel, a series of 
essays, signed Marcellus, exposing the lawlessness, 
injustice, and criminality, of such interference in 



10 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

favor of one of the belligerents. *' For if," he wrote, 
" as the poet, with more than poetical truth, has said, 
* war is murder,' the plunder of private property, the 
pillage of all the regular rewards of honest industry 
and laudable enterprise, upon the mere pretence of a 
national contest, in the eye of justice can appear in 
no other light than highway robbery. If, however, 
some apology for the practice is to be derived from 
the incontrollable law of necessity, or from the impe- 
rious law of war, certainly there can be no possible 
excuse for those who incur the guilt without being 
able to plead the palliation ; for those v/ho violate the 
rights of nations in order to obtain a license for rapine 
manifestly show that patriotism is but the cloak for 
such enterprises ; that the true objects are plunder 
and pillage ; and that to those engaged in them it 
was only the lash of the executioner which kept 
them in the observance of their civil and political 
duties." 

After developing the folly and madness of such 
conduct in a nation whose commerce was expanded 
over the globe, and which was "destitute of even the 
defensive apparatus of war," and showing that it 
would lead to general bankruptcy, and endanger even 
the existence of the nation, he maintained that 
"impartial and unequivocal neutrality was the impe- 
rious duty of the United States." Their pretended 
obligation to take part in the war resulting from ' ' the 
guarantee of the possessions of France in America," 
he denied, on the ground that either circumstances 
had wholly dissolved those obligations, or they were 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 11 

suspended and made impracticable by the acts of the 
French government. 

The ability displayed in these essays attracted the . 
attention of Washington and his cabinet, and the 
coincidence of these views with their own was imme- 
diately manifested by the proclamation of neutrality. ^ 
Their thoughts were again, soon after, attracted to 
the author, by a third series of essays, published in 
November, 1793, in the Columbian Centinel, under 
the signature of Columbus, in which he entered the 
lists in defence of the constituted authorities of the 
United States, exposing and reprobating the lan- 
guage and conduct of Genet, the minister from the 
French republic, whose repeated insults upon the first 
magistrate of the American Union, and upon the 
national government, had been as public and as 
shameless as they had been unprecedented. For, 
after Washington, supported by the highest judicial 
authority of the country, had, as President of the 
United States, denied publicly Genet's authority to 
establish consular courts Avithin them, and to issue 
letters of marque and reprisal to their citizens, against 
the enemies of France, he had the insolence to appeal 
from the President, and to deny his power to revoke 
the exequatur of a French consul, who, by a process 
issued from his own court, rescued, with an armed 
force, a vessel out of the custody of justice. 

In these essays Genet is denounced as a dangerous 
enemy ; his appeal " as an insolent ontrage to the man 
who was deservedly the object of the grateful affection 
of the whole people of America ; " "as a rude attempt • 



12 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 



j^. 



of a loeardless foreign stripling, whose commission from 
a friendly power was his only title to respect, not 
supported by a shadow of right on his part, and not 
less hostile to the constitution than to the govern- 
ment." 

The violence of the times, and the existence of a 
powerful party in the United States ready to support 
the French minister in his hostility to the national 
government, are also illustrated by the following 
facts : " That an American jury had been compelled 
by the clamor of a collected multitude to acquit a 
prisoner without the unanimity required by law;" 
" by the circulation of caricatures representing Presi- 
dent Washington and a judge of the Supreme Court 
with a guillotine suspended over their heads;" "by 
posting upon the mast of a French vessel of war, in 
the harbor of Boston, the names of twenty citizens, 
all of them inoffensive, and some of them personally 
respectable, as objects of detestation to the crew;" 
*' by the threatening, by an anonymous assassin, to 
visit with inevitable death a member of the Legislature 
of New York, for expressing, with the freedom of an 
American citizen, his opinion of the proceedings of 
the French minister;" and "by the formation of a 
lengthened chain of democratic societies, assuming to 
themselves, under the semblance of a warmer zeal 
for the cause of liberty, to control the operations of 
the government, and to dictate laws to the coun- 
try." 

The talent and knowledge of diplomatic relations, 
thus displayed, powerfully impressed the administra- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 13 

tion, anil the nomination of ]\Ir. AJams as minister 
from the United States resident at the Xetherhmds, 
by Washington and his cabinet, was confirmed unan- 
imously by the Senate, in June, 1794. At the request 
of the Secretary of State, he immediately repaired to 
Philadelphia. His commission was delivered to him on 
the 11th of July, the day he entered his twenty-eighth 
year. He embarked in Septend3er from Boston, and 
in October arrived in London, where Messrs. Jay and 
Pinckney were then negotiating a treaty between Great 
Britain and the United States, who immediately 
admitted him to their deliberations. Concerning 
this treaty, which occasioned, soon after, such unex- 
ampled fury of opposition in the United States, Mr. 
Adams, at the time, thus expressed his opinion : " The 
treaty is far from being satisfactory to either Mr. Jay 
or Mr. Pinckney. It is far below the standard which 
would be advantageous to the country. It is proba- 
ble, however, the negotiators will consent to it, as ifc 
is, in their opinion, preferable to a war. Tlie satis- 
faction proposed to be made to the United States 
for the recent depredations on their commerce, the 
principal object of Jay's mission, is provided for 
in as ample a manner as we could expect. The deliv- 
ery of the, posts is protracted to a more distant day 
than is desirable. But, I think, the compensation 
made for the present and future detention of them will 
be a sufficient equivalent. The commerce with their 
West India islands, partially opened to us, will be of 
great importance, and indemnifies for the deprivation 
jf the fur- trade since the treaty of peace, as well as 



14 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

for the negroes carried away contrary to the engage- 
ments of the treaty, at least as far as it respects the 
nation. As to the satisfaction we are to make, I think 
it is no more than is in justice due from us. The 
article which provides against the future confiscation 
of debts, and of property in the funds, is useful, 
because it is honest. If its operation should turn out 
more advantageous to them, it will be more honorable 
for us ; and I never can object to entering formally 
into an obligation to do that which, upon every virtu- 
ous principle, ought to be done without it. As a treaty 
of commerce it will be indeed of little use to us, and 
we shall never obtain anything more faA^orable so long 
as the principles of the navigation act are obstinately 
adhered to by Great Britain. This system is so much 
a fixvorite with the nation that no minister would dare 
to depart from it. Indeed, I hav^ no idea we shall 
ever obtain, by compact, a better footing for our com- 
merce with this country than that on which it now 
stands ; and therefore the shortness of time, limited 
for the operation of this part of the compact, is, I 
think, beneficial to us." 

After remaining fifteen days in London, Mr, Adams 
sailed, on the oOth of October, for Holland, landed 
at Ilellevoetsluis, and proceeded without delay to the 
Hague. 

His reception as the representative of the United 
States had scarcely been acknowledged by the Presi- 
dent of the States General, before Holland was taken 
possession of by the French, under Pichegru. The 
Stadtholder fled, the tree of liberty was planted, and 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 15 

the French national flag displayed before the Stadt- 
hoiise. The people were kept quiet by seventy thou- 
sand French soldiers. The Stadtholder, tlie n(»bil- 
ity, and the regencies of the cities, were all abolished, 
a provincial niunicipalit}' ap[)oiuted, and the country 
received as an ally of France, under the name of the 
Batavian Republic ; the streets being filled with tri- 
colored cockades, and resounding with the Carmag- 
nole, or the Marseilles Ilymn. iMr. Adams was vis- 
ited by the representatives of the French people, and 
recognized as the minister of a nation free like them- 
selves, with wliom the most fraternal relations should 
be maintained. In response, he assured them of the 
attachment of his fellow-citizens for the French peo- 
ple, wdio felt grateful for the obligations they were 
under to the French nation, and closed with demand- 
ing safety and protection for all American persons and 
property in the country, ^ 

Popular societies in Holland were among the most 
efficient means of the success of the revolutictn, as 
they had been in France. Mr. Adams, being solicited 
to join one of them, declined, considering it improper 
in a stranger to take part personally in the politics of 
the country. " It was," he wTote, "unnecessary for 
me to look out for motives to justify my refusal./ I 
have an aversion to political popuhir societies in gen- 
eral. To destroy an established power, they are 
undoubtedly an efficacious instrument, but in their 
nature they are fit for nothing else. The reign of 
Robespierre has shown what use they make of power 
when they obtain it." (^ 



16 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

The station of Mr. Adams at the Hague gave him 
opportunities to acquaint himself with parties and per- 
sons, their motives and principles, of which he availed 
himself with characteristic industry. 

In October, 1795, he was directed by the Secre- 
tary of State to repair to England, and arriving there 
in November ensuing, he found he was appointed to 
exchange ratifications of Mr. Jay's treaty with the 
British government. This mission was far from pleas- 
ant to him. In effect it was merely ministerial, and 
so far as it might result in negotiation, he did not 
anticipate any good. " I am convinced," he wrote, 
" that Mr. Jay did everything that was to be done ; 
that he did so much affords me a proof of the wisdom 
with which he conducted the business, that grows 
stronger the more I see. But circumstances will do 
more than any negotiation. The pride of Britain 
itself must bend to the course of events. The rigor of 
her system already begins to relax, and one year of 
war to her and peace to us will be more favorable to 
our interests, and to the final establishment of our 
principles, than could possibly be effected by twenty 
years of negotiation or v\'ar." 

While in England, the duties of his appointment 
brought him into frequent intercourse with Lord Gren- 
ville and other leading British statesmen of the period. 
After the objects of his mission had been acceptably 
fulfilled, he received authority from his government to 
return to his station, at the Hague, in May, 1706. 
His time was there devoted to official duties, to the 
claims of general society, to an extensive correspond- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. IT 

eiice, the study of works on (li[)lomacy, the English 
and Latin classics, and the Dutch and Italian lan- 
guages. 

Ill August, 1T9G, he received from the Secretary 
of State an appointment as minister i)lenipotentiary 
to the Court of Portugal, with directions not to quit 
the Hague until he received further instructions. 
These did not reach him until the arrival of r^Ir. ]Mur- 
ray, his successor, in July, 1797, when lie took his 
departure for England. Truthfulness to himself, not 
less than to the public, characterized Mr. Adams. 
Every day had its assigned object, which every hour 
successively, as far as possible, fulfilled. Daily he 
called himself to account for what he had done or 
omitted. At the close of every month and year he 
submitted himself to retrospection concerning fulfilled 
or neglected duties, judging himself by a severe 
standard. 

On arriving in London, he found his appointment 
to the Court of Portugal superseded by another to the 
Court of Berlin, with directions not to proceed on the 
mission until he had received the necessary instruc- 
tions. While waiting for these, an engagement he 
had formed during a former visit to England was ful- 
filled, by his marriage, on the 2Gth of July, 1797, 
with Louisa Catharine Johnson, the daughter of 
Joshua Johnson, American consul at London; a lady 
highly qualified to support and to ornament the vari- 
ous elevated stations he was destined to fill. Mr. 
Adams was reluctant to accept the appointment to 
Berlin, as it had been made by his father, who had 



18 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

succeeded Washington as President of the United 
States. "I have submitted to take it," he immedi- 
ately wrote to his mother, "notwithstanding my 
former declaration to you and my lather, made a 
short time ago. I have broken a resolution I had 
deliberately formed, and that I still think right ; but 
I never acted more reluctantly. The tenure by which 
I am for the future to hold an office of such a nature 
will take from me the satisfaction I have enjoyed, 
hitherto, in considering myself a public servant." 
To his father he wrote : "I cannot, and ought not, to 
discuss with you the propriety of the measure. I 
have undertaken the duty, and will discharge it to the 
best of my ability, and will complain no further. But 
I most earnestly entreat that whenever there shall be 
deemed no further occasion for a minister at Berlin I 
may be recalled, and that no nomination of me to any 
other public office whatever may ever again proceed 
from the present chief magistrate."/ His continuance 
in a diplomatic career had been repeatedly urged by 
President Washington. In August, 1795, he wrote 
to John Adams, then Vice-President: " Your son must 
not think of retiring from the walk he is now in (min- 
ister from the United States to Holland). His pros- 
pects, if he pursues it, are fair ; and I shall be much 
mistaken if, in as short a time as can well be ex- 
pected, he is not found at the head of the diplomatic 
corps, let the government be administered by Avhom- 
^soever the people may choose." In a letter dated 
f 20th February, 1797, addressed to Mr. Adams, just 
j before his entrance on the Presidency, Washington 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



19 



again wrote : " I h:ivc a strong hope that you will not 
withhold merited promotion to Mr. John Quincy 
Adams because he is your son. For, without intend- 
ing to compliment the father or the mother, or to cen- 
sure any others, I give it as my decided opinion that , 
Mr. Adams is the most valuable public character we 
have abroad, and that he will prove himself to be the J 
ablest of all our diplomatic corps./ If he was now to 
be brought into that line, or into any other public 
walk, I would not, on the principles which have regu- 
lated my own conduct, disapprove the caution hinted 
at in the letter. But he is already entered ; the pub- 
lic, more and more, as he is known, are appreciating 
his talents and worth ; and his country would sustain 
a loss if these are checked by over delicacy on your 

part."* 

This letter, communicated to Mr. Adams by his 

mother, induced him reluctantly to acquiesce in this 

appointment. In reply, he wrote: "I know with 

what delight your truly maternal heart has received 

every testimonial of Washington's favorable voice. It 

is among the most precious gratifications of my life to 

reflect upon the pleasure which my conduct has given 

to my parents. The terms, indeed, in which such a 

character as Washington has repeatedly expressed 

himself concerning me, have left me nothing to wish, 

if they did not alarm me by their very strength. 

How much, my dear mother, is required of me, to 

support and justify such a judgment as that which 

you have copied into your letter ! " 

* Sparks' Life and Writings of Washington, xi., p. 5G, and p. 188. 



20 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Mr. and Mrs. Adams embarked from Gravesend, 
and landed at Hamburg on the 26th of October, and 
reached Berlin early in November. He was received, 
with gratifying expressions of regard for the United 
States, by Count Finkenstein, the prime minister ; 
but, owing to the king's illness, an audience could not 
be granted. After his death Mr. Adams was admitted 
to presentation and audience by his successor. New 
credentials, which were required, did not arrive until 
July, 1798, when Mr. Adams was fully accredited. 

The absence of the king from Berlin prevented the 
renewal of the treaty, which was not commenced until 
the ensuing autumn, nor completed, in consequence 
of incidental delays, until the 11th of July, 1799, 
when it was signed by all the king's ministers and 
Mr. Adams, and was afterwards unanimously approved 
by the Senate of the United States. The object of 
his mission being fulfilled, Mr. Adams immediately 
wrote to his father that he should, at any time, acqui- 
esce in his recall. While waiting for the decision of 
his government, he travelled, with his f\imily, in 
Saxony and Bohemia, and, in the ensuing summer, 
into Silesia. His observations durinix this tour were 
embodied in letters to his brother, Thomas B. Adam?, 
and were published, without his authority, in Phibi 
delphia, and subsequently in England. The wor^ 
contains interesting sketches of Silesian life and man 
ners, and important accounts of manufactures, mines, 
and localities ; concluding with elaborate historical, 
geographical, and statistical statements of the prov- 
ince. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 21 

The following passages are characteristic, and indi- 
cate the general spirit of the work. " Count Finken- 
stein resides in this vicinity. He was formerly 
president of the judicial tribunal at Custrin, but was 
dismissed by Frederic II., on the occasion of ilie mil- 
ler Arnold's famous lawsuit; an instance in wliich the 
great king, from mere love of justice, conimittcd the 
f'-reatest injustice that ever cast a shade upon his 
character. His anxiety, upon that occasion, to prove 
to the world that in his courts of justice the beggar 
should be upon the same footing as the prince, made 
him forget that in substantial justice the maxim ought 
to bear alike on both sides, and that the prince should 
obtain his right as much as the ])eggar. Count Fink- 
enstein and several other judges of the court at Cus 
trin, together with the High Chancellor Fiirst, were 
all dismissed from their places, for doing their duty, 
and persisting in it, contrary to the will of the king, 
who, substituting his ideas of natural equity in place 
of the prescriptions of positive law, treated them with 
the utmost severity, for conduct wdiich ought to have 
received his fullest approbation." 

" Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Watts, has bestowed 
a just and exalted encomium upon him for not dis- 
daining to descend from the pride of genius and the 
dignity of science to write for the wants and the capa- 
cities of children. ' Every man acquainted,' says he, 
' with the common principles of human action, will 
look with veneration on the writer who is at one time 
combating Locke, and at another making a catechism 
for children in their fourth vear.' But how much 



22 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

greater still is the tribute of admiration, irresistibly 
drawn from us, when we behold an absolute monarch, 
the greatest general of his age, eminent as a writer in 
the highest departments of literature, descending, in a 
manner, to teach the alphabet to the children of his 
kingdom ; bestowing his care, his persevering assi- 
duity, his influence and his power, in diffusing plain 
and useful knowledge among his subjects, in opening 
to their minds the first and most important page of 
the book of science, in filling the whole atmosphere 
they breathed with that intellectual fragrance w^hich 
had before been imprisoned in the vials of learning, or 
enclosed within the gardens of wealth! Immortal 
Frederic ! when seated on the throne of Prussia, with 
kneeling millions at thy feet, thou wert only a king; 
on the fields of Lutzen, of Torndoff, of Rosbach, of 
so many other scenes of human blood and anguish, 
thou wert only a hero ; even in thy rare and glori- 
ous converse with the muses and with science thou 
wert only a philosopher, a historian, a poet ; but in 
this generous ardor, this active, enlightened zeal for 
the education of thy people, thou w^ert trulij great — 
the father of thy country — the benefactor of man- 
kind ! " 

In 1801, Mr. Adams received from his government 
permission to return home. After taking leave with 
the customary formalities, he left Berlin, sailed from 
Hamburg, and on the 4th of September, 1801, arrived 
in the United States. During his residence in Berlin 
his time was devoted to official labor and intellectual 
improvement ; yet his letters show that he was seldom. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



23 



if ever, self-satisfied, being filled with aspirations after 
something higher and better than he could accomplish. 
Ilis translations, at this period, embraced many satires 
of Juvenal, and Wieland's Oberon from the original, 
into English verse; the last he intended for the 
press, had it not been superseded by the version of 
Sotheby. He also translated from the German a 
treatise, by Gentz, on the origin and principles of the 
American Revolution, which he finished and trans- 
mitted to the United States for publication, eulogizing 
it " as one of the clearest accounts that exist of the 
rise and progress of the American Revolution, in so 
small a compass ; rescuing it from the disgraceful 
imputation of its having proceeded from the same 
principles, and of its being conducted in tlie same 
spirit, as that of France. This error has nowhere 
been more frequently repeated, nowhere been of more 
pernicious tendency, than in America itself." 

The last years of Mr. Adams' residence at the Court A 
of Berlin were painfully affected by the bitter party ; 
animadversions which assailed his father's administra- 
tion, and which did not fail to bring within the sphere 
of their asperities the missions he had himself held in 
Europe. These feelings became intense on the pub- 
lication of Alexander Hamilton's letter "On the 
Public Conduct and Character of John Adams, Presi- 
dent of the United States." This letter, with the 
divisions in the cabinet at Washington, occasioned by 
the political friends of Hamilton, excited in the breast 
of Mr. Adams a spirit, which, from affection for his 
father, and a sense of the injustice done to him, could 



24 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



I' not be otherwise than indignant. Though concealed, 

j it was not the less understood. He regarded Mr. 

I Hamilton's letter as the efficient cause of his father's 
loss of power, and attributed its influence to its being 

\ circulated at the eve of the presidential election, and 
to its adaptation to awaken prejudices and excite 
party jealousies ; although it contained nothing that 
could justly shake confidence in a stat'esman of long- 
tried experience and fidelity. He pronounced thit 
letter as not only a full vindication, but the best eulo- 
gium on his father's administration. 



CHAPTER II. 

RESIDENCE IN BOSTON. — RETURNS TO THE BAR. — ELECTED TO THE 

SENATE OF MASSACHUSETTS TO THE SENATE OF THE UNITED 

STATES. — HIS COURSE RELATIVE TO THE ATTACK OF THE LEOPARO 

ON THE CHESAPEAKE. RESIGNS HIS SEAT AS SENATOR OF THE 

UNITED STATES. APPOINTED MINISTER TO RUSSIA. FINAL SEPARA- 
TION FROM THE FEDERAL PARTY. 

Under the circumstances stated in the preceding 
chapter, Mr. Adams returned to the United States in 
no disposition to coalesce with either division of the 
Federal party. He regarded it as fortunate for him- 
self that events, in producing which he had no agency, 
had placed him in a position free from any constructive 
pledges to a party which in its original form no longer 
existed, and at liberty to shape his future course 
according to his own independent views of private 
interest and public duty. Resuming his residence in 
Boston, and his place at the bar of Massachusetts, 
under circumstances far from being pleasant or encour- 
aging, after eight years' employment in foreign official 
stations, he had old studies to revise, and new stat- 
utes and recent decisions to explore. To the broad 
field of diplomacy had succeeded the intricate and 
narrow windings of special pleading and local laws. 
His juniors were in the field ; by the failure of Euro- 
pean bankers his property had been diminished ; ho 



26 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

had a family to support ; yet, neither dispirited nor 
complaining, he reentered his profession, and, devot- 
ing his leisure hours to literature and science, appar- 
ently abandoned the political arena, without manifest- 
ing a design or desire to return to it. But he was 
nut destined to remain long in private life. At this 
period the Federalists had lost the control of national 
affairs, but they retained their superiority in Massa- 
chusetts. Their union as a party was not sustained 
by the same identity of feeling and view by which, 
in earlier periods, it had been characterized. It was 
cemented rather by antipathy to the prevailing power 
than by any hope of regaining it. A division, more 
real than apparent, separated the friends of the elder 
Adams from those who, uniting with Hamilton, had 
condemned his policy in the presidency. The former 
were probably larger in number ; the latter had the 
advantage in talent, activity, and iniluence. Both 
soon united in placing Mr. Adams in the Senate of the 
state, without any solicitation or intimation of political 
coincidence from him. In this election the opponents 
of his father's policy were acquiescent rather than 
content. They knew the independence and self- 
relying spirit of Mr. Adams, his restiveness in the 
trammels of party, his disposition to lead rather than 
follow ; and yielded silently to a result which they 
could not prevent. The spirit which they anticipated 
was soon made evident. 

At the annual organization of the state government 
it had been usual to choose the members of the Gov- 
ernor's Council from his political friends. Mr. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 27 

Adams at once proposed to place in it one or more of 
his political oppi;)nents. This measure, ^vhich ho 
maintained was wise and prudent, was regarded, 
according to the usual charity of party spirit, as 
designed to gain favor with the Democracy, and was 
immediately rejected. In other instances his disposi- 
tion to think and act independently of the Federal 
party was manifested, and was of course not acceptable 
to its leaders. 

In November he was urged to accept a nomination 
as a member of the House of Representatives in Con- 
gress. This he refused, saying that "he would not 
stand in the way of Mr. Quincy,"* who had been the 
candidate at the preceding election. This objection 
was immediately removed, by an assui'ance of the 
previous determination of the latter to decline, and of ^ 
the satisfaction with which he regarded the nomination 
of Mr. Adams. The result was unsuccessful. Out of 
thirty-seven hundred votes, William Eustis was elected . 
by a majority of fifttj -nine. The newspapers assigned 
as the cause that the day of the election was rainy. 
Mr. Adams surmised that it was owing to the indiffer- 
ence to his success of the leaders of the old Federal 
party, and remarked on the occasion, " This is among 
the thousand proofs how large a portion of Federalism 
is a mere f\iir- weather principle, too weak to overcome 
a shower of rain. It shows the degree of dependence 
that can be placed on such friends. As a party their 
adversaries are more sure and more earnest." 

* The writer of this Memoir. 



28 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Ill an oration, delivered in May of this year, before 
the Massachusetts Charitable Fire Society, Mr. Adams 
paid a just and feeling tribute to the memory of 
George Richards Minot, then recently deceased, in 
which the character of that historian, the purity of 
his life, moral worth, and intellectual endowments, are 
celebrated with great fulness and truth. In Decem- 
ber he delivered, at Plymouth, an address commem- 
orative of the Pilgrim Fathers. 

During the remainder of the civil year Mr. Adams 
had more than once indicated his independence of 
party, and his settled purpose of thinking and acting 
on all subjects for himself. When, therefore, in Feb- 
ruary, 1803, a vacancy in the Senate of the United 
States occurred, the nomination of Mr. Adams was 
opposed by that of Timothy Pickering, who was 
deemed by his friends better entitled to the office, 
from age and long familiarity with public affairs. To 
their extreme disappointment, however, after three 
ballotings, without success, in the House of Repre- 
sentatives, Mr. Adams was chosen, and his election 
Avas unanimously confirmed by the Senate. In March 
following, another vacancy in the Senate of the 
United States having occurred, Mr. Pickering was 
elected. Thus, by a singular course of events, two 
statesmen were placed as colleagues in the Senate of 
the United States, from Massachusetts, between whom, 
from antecedent circumstances and known w^ant of 
sympathy in political opinion, cordial coiiperation 
could scarcely be anticipated. Apparent harmony of 
principles and views was, however, manifested. Mr. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 20 

Adams well understood the delicacy of his position, 
arising from the ill-concealed jealousy of the Federal- 
ists, on the one hand, and the open dislike of tlio 
Democracy, on the other. He considered hiniscH" 
placed between two batteries, neither of which 
regarded him as one of their soldiers. He early 
adopted two principles, as rules of his political con- 
duct, from which he never deviated, — to seek or 
solicit no public office, and, to whatever station he 
might be called by his country, to use no instrument 
for success or advancement but efficient public service. 
In October, 1803, Mr. Adams removed his family 
to Washington, and took his seat in the Senate of the 
United States. On the 2Gth of that month he took 
ground in opposition to the administration upon the 
bill enabling the President to take possession of Lou- 
isiana, and on which he voted in coincidence with 
his Federal colleagues. His objection was to the 
second section, which provided " that all the militunj, 
civil and judicial powers, exercised by the officers of 
the existing government of Louisiana, shall be vested 
in such person and persons, and shall be exercised in 
such maimer, as the President of the United States shall 
direct." The transfer of such a power to the Presi- 
dent of the United States, Mr. Adams deemed and 
maintained, was unconstitutional ; and he called upon 
the supporters of the bill to point out the article, sec- 
tion, or paragraph, of the constitution, which author- 
ized Congress to confer it on the President. He 
regarded the constitution of the United States to l)e 
one of limited powers ; and he declared that he could 



30 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

not reconcile it to liis judgment that the authority 
exercised in this section was within the legitimate 
powers conferred by the constitution. Many years 
afterwards, when his vote on this occasion was made 
a subject of party censure and obloquy, in addition 
to the preceding reasons Mr. Adams gave to the 
public the following solemn convictions which influ- 
enced his course : 

" The people of the United States had not — much less had 
the people of Louisiana — given to the Congress of the United 
States the power to form this union ; and, until the consent 
of both people could be obtained, every act of legislation by 
the Congress of the United States over the people of Louisi- 
ana, distinct from that of taking possession of the territory, 
was, in my view, unconstitutional, and an act of usurped 
authority. My opinion, therefore, was that the sense of the 
people, both of the United States and Louisiana, should be 
immediately taken : of the first, by an amendment of the con- 
stitution, to be proposed and acted upon in the regular form ; 
and of the last, by taking the votes of the people of Louisiana 
immediately after possession of the territory should be taken 
by the United States under the treaty. I had no doubt that 
the consent of both people would be obtained with as much 
ease and little more loss of time than it actually took Congress 
to prepare art act for the government of the territory ; and I 
thought this course of proceeding, while it would terminate 
in the same result as the immediate exercise of ungranted 
transcendental powers by Congress, would serve as a laTid- 
mark of correct principles for future times, — as a memorial of 
homage to the fundamental principles of civil society, to the 
primitive sovereignty of the people, and the unalienable rights 
of man." 

On the 3d of the ensuing November he manifested 
his independent spirit by voting in favor of the appro- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 31 

priation of eleven millions of dollars for carrying into 
effect the treaty for the purchase of Louisiana, in oppo- 
sition to the other senators of the Federal party ; — 
a vote which, many years afterwards, in consequence 
of comments of party, he took the opportunity publicly 
to expLiin. The critical nature of the course to which 
he foresaw he was destined was thus expressed by 
himself: "I have had already occasion to experi- 
ence, what I had before reason to expect, the danger 
of adhering to my own principles. The country is so 
totally given up to the spirit of party, that not to fol- 
low the one or the other is an unexpiable offence. 
The worst of these has the popular current in its favor, 
and uses its triumph with all the unprincipled fury of 
faction ; while the other is waiting, with all the impa- 
tience of revenge, for the time when its turn may 
come to oppress and punish by the popular favor. 
But my choice is made. If I cannot hope to give sat- 
isfaction to my country, I am ;.t least determined to 
have the approbation of my own reflections." 

On the 10th of January, 1804, Mr. Adams intro- 
duced two resolutions for the consideration of the 
Senate: the one declaring that "the people of the 
United States have never, in any manner, delegated 
to this Senate the power of giving its legislative con- 
currence to any act imposing taxes upon the inhab- 
itants of Louisiana without their consent ; " the other, 
"that, by concurring in any act of legislation for 
imposing taxes upon the inliabitants of Louisiana, 
without their consent, this Senate would assume a 
power unwarranted by the constitution, and dangerous 



32 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADxVMS. 

to the liberties of the people of the United States.'' 
After a debate of three hours, both resolutions were 
rejected, as he anticipated ; only three senators — 
Tracy, of Connecticut, Olcott, of New Hampshire, and 
White, of Delaware — voting with him in favor of the 
first, and twenty-two voting in the negative ; Mr. 
Pickering, his colleague, asking to be excused from 
voting, and Mr. Hillhouse, the remaining Federalist 
in the Senate, absenting himself, obviously to avoid 
voting : after which the last was unanimously rejected. 
Concerning his course on this occasion Mr. Adams 
wrote: "I have no doubt of incurring much censure 
and obloquy for this measure. I hope I shall be pre- 
pared for and able to bear it, from the consciousness 
of my sincerity and of my duty." 

Mr. Adams alone spoke against the bill for the tem- 
porary government of Louisiana, wdiich passed on the 
ensuing 18th of February ; and only four senators 
— Messrs. Hillhouse, Olcott, Plummcr, and Stone — 
voted with him in the negative ; j\Ir. Pickering absent- 
ing himself from the question. 

In August, 1805, the corporation of Harvard Col- 
lege elected Mr. Adams Professor of Rhetoric and 

a 

Oratory on the Boylston foundation. After modifi- 
cations of tlie statutes, which he suggested, were 
adopted, he accepted, and immediately entered upon 
a course of preparatory studies, reviving his knowd- 
edge of the Greek, and making researches among 
English, Latin, and French writers, relative to the 
objects of his professorship. In the ensuing Decem- 
ber, as a member of the Ninth Congress, he took an 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 33 

active part in the debates and measures of the Sen- 
ate. 

In January, 1806, he was appointed on a com- 
mittee, of which Mr. Smith, of Maryhmd, was chair- 
man, on that part of the President's message " rehitive 
to the spoliations of our commerce on the high seas, 
and the new principles assumed by the British courts 
of admiralty, as a pretext for the condemnation of our 
vessels in their prize courts." The debates in that 
committee resulted in two resolutions, both ollered by 
Mr. Adams, adopted, reported, and finally passed by 
the Senate, with some modifications ; Mr. Pickering, 
Mr. Ilillhouse, and Mr. Tracy, the three Federalists 
in the Senate, voting for tlicm, 

British aggressions and British policy towards neu- 
trals were, in the judgment of Mr. Adams, to be 
resisted at every hazard. Ilis opinions on these sub- 
jects had been formed from opportunities which no 
other American statesman had equally enjoyed. In 
1783 he had been present at the signature of the 
treaty of peace, and had imbibed the opinions and 
feelings then entertained by the American ministers. 
In 1795 he had been engaged in negotiations with 
British statesmen, particularly with Lord Grenville. 
Their views in respect of American commercial rights 
he considered selfish and insolent ; resistance to them 
as an emanation from the spirit of patriotism, to which 
others gave the name of "prejudice," or "antipa- 
thy." Of these opinions and feelings he made no 
concealment ; and to them may be traced the course 
of policy which, shortly alter, separated him from the 

3 



84 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Federal party, and su])jectcd him temporarily to their 
reproaches and censures. 

In June, 1806, Mr. Adams was inaugurated Pro- 
fessor of Oratory in Harvard University, and during 
the ensuing two years delivered a course of lectures 
on Rhetoric and Oratory, whicli have been published 
in two octavo volumes, and constitute an enduring 
monument of fidelity, laborious research, and eloquent 
illustration of the objects and duties of his academic 
station. While engaged in these labors, an event 
occurred which intensely excited his feelings as a man 
and a statesman. 

On the 22d of June, 1807, during the recess of 
Congress, an attack by the British ship Leopard upon 
the American frigate Chesapeake, by which several 
of her crew were killed, and four of them taken away, 
created surprise and indignation throughout the Union. 
From the previous state of his opinions, no one par- 
took more strongly of these feelings than Mr. Adams. 
He immediately urged his political friends to call a 
town-meeting in Faneuil Hall on the subject ; but the 
measure was utterly discouraged by the leaders of the 
Federal party. Soon, however, a meeting of the 
inhabitants of Boston and the neighboring towns was 
called at the Statehouse to consider that outrage. 
The meeting was not numerous, and consisted almost 
entirely of the friends of the administration. Mr. 
Gerry was chosen chairman, and Mr. Adams, who had 
attended it, was appointed on the committee to pre- 
pare appropriate resolutions. These, when reported 
and modified according to suggestions made by ]Mr. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 35 

Adams, were unanimously adopted. AVhen it was 
intimated to him that his course was regarded as 
symptomatic of party apostasy, he replied that his 
sense of duty shouhl never yiekl to the pleasure of 
party. 

Soon after, in consequence of letters from a com- 
mittee of correspondence at Norfolk, a town-meeting 
was called at Faneuil Ilall, at which resolutions were 
passed, reported by a committee of which Mr. Adams 
Avas chairman. Mr. Otis offered a resolution calling 
on government for the protection of a naval force ; 
but, Mr. Adams objecting, it was withdrawn. 

On the 27th of October, 1807, Mi\ Jefferson called 
a special meeting of Congress, chiefly on account of 
the affair of the Chesapeake. On this subject the 
discrepancy of the opinions and views of Mr. Adams 
with those of the leaders of the Federal party were so 
openly manifested, that his separation from it was 
generally anticipated. lie had now boon a mcm"ber 
of the Senate during four sessions, but had not been 
permitted to exercise any decided influence on the 
subjects of debate. Many of his propositions had 
failed under circumstances which indicated a disposi- 
tion to discourage him from such attempts. Some, 
which on his motion had been negatived, had been 
subsequently easily carried, when moved by members 
of the administration party. In respect of the general 
policy of the country, he had been uniformly in a 
small and decreasing minority. His opinion and 
votes, however, had been oftener in unison witli the 
'idministration than with their opponents ; and he had 



36 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 



met with quite as much opposition from his party 
friends as from their adversaries. At this crisis, how- 
ever, he took the lead, and, immediately on the deliv- 
ery of the President's message, oifered to the Senate 
two resolutions. 1st. "That so much of the Presi- 
idcnt's message as related to the recent outrages com- 
mitted by British armed vessels within the jurisdiction 
and in the waters of the United States, and to the 
legislative provisions which may be expedient as 
resulting from them, be referred to a select commit- 
tee, with leave to report by bill or otherwise." 2d. 
" That so much of the said message as relates to the 
formation of the seamen of the United States into a 
special militia, for the purpose of occasional defence 
of the harbors against sudden attacks, be referred to a 
special committee, with leave to report by bill or oth- 
erwise." 

Both these resolutions were adopted, and on the first 
Mr. Adams was appointed chairman. Soon after, in 
the course of the same session, Mr. Adams took the 
incipient step on several important subjects, and was 
appointed chairman of the committee to whom they 
were intrusted in each of them ; thus manifesting that 
he intended no longer to take a subordinate part in 
the proceedings of the Senate, and that a disposition 
to disappoint him was no longer a feeling entertained 
by a majority of that body. 

^ On the 24th of November, Mr. Adams reported a 
bill on the British outrages, and, on a motion to strike 
out of it a section providing that " no British armed 
vessel shall be admitted to enter the harbors and 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 37 

waters under the jurisdiction of the United States, 
except when forced in by distress, by the dangers of 
the sea, or when charged with public dispatches, or 
coming as a public packet," Mr. Adams, with twenty- 
five others, voted in the negative. Messrs. Goodrich, 
Pickering, and Ilillhouse, the only three Federal sen- 
ators, alone voted in the affirmative. On the final 
passage of the bill, Mr. Adams voted with the major- 
ity, in the affirmative, and the three Federal senators 
in the negative. 

On the 18th of December, 1807, Mr. Jefferson sent 
a message to Congress recommending an embargo. 
A bill in conformity having been immediately reported, 
a motion was made, in the Senate, that the rule wdiich 
required three difierent readings on tlu'ee different 
days should be suspended for three days. Violent 
debates ensued. On the vote to suspend, Mr. Adams 
voted in the affirmative. His colleague and every 
other Federalist voted in the negative. 

On the final passage of the bill laying the embargo, 
and on the subject of British aggressions, Mr. Adams 
again repeatedly separated from his colleagues and 
the other members of the Federal party, and voted in 
coincidence with the administration. 

Newspaper asperities and severities in debate 
ensued, which he supported, as he averred, in the 
consciousness that the course of the administration 
was the only safe one for his country, and in the 
belief that it would be justified by events, angi receive 
the sanction of future times. Ilis course had been, 
however, opposite to that of the other Federal mem- 



38 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

bers in both houses of Congress. On a subject sc 
momentous to the commercial states, his colleague, 
Mr. Pickering, thought proper to justify to the people 
of Massachusetts the course and motives of the Fed- 
eral party, and on the IGth of Februaiy, 1808, 
addressed a letter to James Sullivan, Governor of that 
commonwealth, stating what papers "had been sub- 
mitted to Congress by the President in justification of 
the embargo," and endeavored to show, by facts and 
reasonings, that the measure had been passed " with- 
out sufficient motive or legitimate object ; that the 
avowed dangers were imaginary and assumed ; and 
that the real motives for it were contained in those 
French dispatches which had been confidentially sub- 
mitted to Congress, and withdrawn by ]Mr. Jeficrson, 
in which the Frencli emperor had declared that ho 
will have no neutrals; " that the embargo was "a 
substitute — a mihl compliance with this harsh de- 
mand ; " that he (Mr. Pickering) had reason to 
believe that the President contemplated its continu- 
ance until the French emperor repealed his decrees. 
He concluded by asserting that an embargo was not 
necessary to the safety of our seamen, our vessels, or 
our merchandise, and was calculated to mislead the 
public mind to the public ruin. 

This letter, though intended for the Legislature 
of Massachusetts, was not communicated to it, the 
political path of Governor Sullivan not being coinci- 
dent wit^ that of Colonel Pickering. But it was soon 
published by a friend of the writer. In a letter t(j 
Harrison G. Otis, on the 31st of March, 1808, Mr 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUI.NCY ADAMS. 30 

Adams puljlished a reply, stating that :Mr. Pickering, 
ill enumerating the pretences (for he thinks there 
were no causes) for the cmhargo, totally omitted the 
British orders in council, which, although not made 
the subject of special communication by the President, 
had been published in the National Intelligencer ante- 
cedent to the embargo, the sweeping tendency of 
whose effects formed, to his understanding, a powerful 
motive, and together with the papers a decisive one, 
for assenting to the embargo ; a measure which he^ 
regarded as " the only shelter from the tempest, the 
last refuge of our violated peace." He adds : " The 
most serious eifect of Mr. Pickering's letter is its 
tendency to reconcile the commercial states to the 
servitude of British protection, and war with all the 
rest of Europe." Regarding it as a proposition to 
strike the standard of the nation, he proceeded to 
investigate the claims of Great Britain in respect of 
impressment, and to her denying neutrals iha right of 
any commerce with her enemies and their colonies, 
which was not allowed in time of peace. This result 
of the rule of 1756, he asserted, was "in itself and 
its consequences one of the deadliest poisons in which 
it was possible for Great Britain to tinge the weapons 
of her hostility." The decrees of Prance and Spain, 
by which every neutral vessel which submitted to Eng- 
lish search was declared ''denationalized," and became 
English property, though cruel in execution, and too 
foolish and absurd to be refuted, were but the rea- 
soning of British jurists, and the simple application 
to the circumstances and powers of France of the rule 



10 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

of the war of 1756. Mr. Adams then proceeded to 
state and reason upon other aggressions of Great Bri- 
tain on our commerce, and asserted that "between 
unqualified submission and offensive resistance against 
the war dechired against American commerce by the 
concurring decrees of all the belligerent powers, the 
embargo had been adopted; and having the double 
tendency of promoting peace and preparing for war, 
in its operation is the great advantage which more 
than outweighs all its evils." 

A course thus independent, and in harmony with 
the policy of the administration, caused Mr. Adams to 
become obnoxious to suspicions inevitably incident to 
every man who, in critical periods, amid party strug- 
gles, changes his political relations. Of the dissatis- 
faction of the Legislature of Massachusetts Mr. Adams 
received an immediate proof. His senatorial term 
would expire on the 3d of March, 1809. To indicate 
their disapprobation of his course, they anticipated 
the time of electing a senator of the United States, 
which, according to usage, would have been in the 
legislative session of that year. James Lloyd was 
chosen senator from Massachusetts by a vote of two 
hundred and forty-eight over two hundred and thir- 
teen for Mr. Adams, in the House of Representatives, 
and of twenty-one over seventeen, in the Senate. 
On the same day anti-embargo resolutions were passed 
in both branches by like majorities. 

The next day Mr. Adams addressed a letter to that 
Legislature, in which he stated that it had been his 
endeavor, deeming it his duty, to support the admin- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 41 

istratiou of the general government in all necessary 
measures to preserve the persons and property of our 
citizens from depredation, and to vindicate the rights 
essential to the independence of our country ; that 
certain resolutions having passed the Legislature, 
expressing disapprobation of measures to wliich, under 
these motives, he had given assent, and wliich he con- 
sidered as enjoining upon the representatives of the 
state in Congress a sort of opposition to the national 
administration in which, consistently with his princi- 
ples, he could not concur, he, therefore, to give the 
Legislature an opportunity to place in tlie Senate of 
the United States a member whose views might be 
more coincident with those they entertained, resigned 
his seat in that body. James Lloyd was immediately 
chosen by the Legislature to take the seat thus vacated. 
In ihQ midst of these political agitations Mr. Adams 
was constantly employed in Avriting and delivering 
lectures, as Professor of Rhetoric, and in pursuing his 
studies of the Greek language and the science of astron- 
omy. During the ensuing summer, the neglect or with- 
drawal of some former friends, and the open asperities 
of others, were often trying to his feelings. Rumors 
were circulated of promises made or of expectations 
held out to him by the administration ; and, although 
he unequivocally denied their truth, belief in them 
was in accordance with the party passions of the 
moment, and w\as diligently inculcated on the popular 
mind by pamphlets and newspapers. Also in the 
summer and winter of 1808 he had to support an 
oppressive weight of oblor^uy, from which he had no 



42 MEMOIR OF JOHx\ QUINCY ADAMS. 

relief, as he asserted, but an unshaken confidence that 
his course had been coincident with the true interests 
of his country, and would finally be approved by it. 
Ill the winter of 1809 he attended the Supreme Court 
of the United States at Washington, and while there 
first received from Mr. Madison, two days after his 
inauguration as President of the United States, an 
intimation of his intention to offer him the appoint- 
ment of minister plenipotentiary to St. Petersburg. 
When this nomination and the concurrence of the 
Senate became public, it was seized and commented 
upon as unquestionable evidence of the motives which 
had occasioned the change in his political course, and 
Avas made the subject of severe animadversions in all 
the forms in which indignant partisans are accustomed 
to express censure and reproach. This appointment 
his political adversaries announced as at once a proof 
and the reward of his apostasy. Such insinuations 
were felt by Mr. Adams as an insupportable wrong. 
For seven years he had previously represented his 
country at foreign courts, in stations to which he 
had been first appointed by Washington himself; 
who had declared that he must not think of retirin"- 
from the diplomatic line, and pronounced him the 
ablest, and destined ultimately to become the head, 
of the diiDlomatic corps.* Under these circum- 
stances he felt that even party spirit itself might have 
spared towards him this reproach, and have recog- 
nized higher motives than seeking and receiving 
reward for party services. Actuated by this sense of 

* Sec pages 18 aud 19. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 43 

wrong, wliilc preparing for his dep.-.rture on the mis- 
sion to Russia, he issued from the press a series of 
strictures, at once severe and vindicti\e, on the policy 
of the Federal leaders, in the form of a review of the 
writings of Fisher Ames ; which were regarded by 
the public, and probably intended by himself, as an 
evidence of irreconcilable abandonment of the party 
to which he had formerly belonged, and a permanent 
adhesion to that of the national administration. 



CHAPTER III 

VOYAGE. ARRIVAL AT ST. PETERSBURr,. PRESENTATION TO THE 

EMPEROR. RESIDENCE AT THE IMPERIAL COURT. DIPLOMATIC 

INTERVIEWS. PRIVATE STUDIES. APPOINTED ONE OF THE COM- 
MISSIONERS TO TREAT FOR PEACE WITH GREAT BRITAIN. LEAVES 

RUSSIA. 

After resigning his professorship at Harvard Uni- 
versity, Mr. Adams embarked from Boston, with Mrs. 
Adams and his youngest son, on the 5th of August, 
1809, in a merchant ship, bound to St. Petersburg. 
During a boisterous and tedious voyage his chissical 
and diplomatic studies were pursued with character- 
istic assiduity. The English were then at war with 
Denmark ; and, as they entered the Baltic, a British 
cruiser sent an officer to examine their papers. The 
same day they were boarded by a Danish officer, who 
ordered the ship to Christiansand. The captain thought 
it prudent to refuse, and to seek shelter from an equi- 
noctial gale in the harbor of Flecknoe. The papers 
of the ship and Mr. Adams' commission were exam- 
ined, and he afterwards went up to Christiansand, 
where he found thirty-eight American vessels, which 
had been brought in by privateers between the months 
of May and August, and were detained for adjudica- 
tion. Sixteen had been condemned, and had appealed 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 45 

to the higher tribunals of the couutiy. The Auieri- 
cans thus detained presented a memorial to ]\Ir. Adams, 
to be forwarded to the President of the United States. 
The sight of so many of his countrymen in distress 
was extremely painful, and he determined to make an 
effort for their relief, without waiting for express 
authority from his government. 

On resuming their voyage, their course was again 
impeded by a British squadron. An officer was sent 
on board by Captain Dundas, of the Stately, a sixty- 
four gun ship, to examine their papers. He com- 
pared the personal appearance of each of the seamen 
with his protection, threatening to take a native of 
Chnrlestown because his person did not correspond 
with the description, and finally ordered the ship to 
return through the Cattegat. 

Mr. Adams immediately went on board the Stately, 
showed his commission, and remonstrated Avith Captain 
Dundas, who referred him to Admir.d Bertie, the 
commander of the squadron, who was in his state- 
room on the quarter-deck. After a protracted oppo- 
sition, the admiral acknowledged the usage of nations, 
and, as an ambassador, permitted him to pursue his 
voyage by the usual course through the sound. From 
these and similar difTiculties, Mr. Adams did not land 
at St. Petersburg until the 23d of October. 

The Chancellor of the empire. Count Romanzoff, 
received Mr. Adams in courtly state, and requested a 
copy of his credential letter, with an assurance of the 
pleasure his appointment had given him personally. 
His presentation was postponed, from the temporary 



46 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAxMS. 

indisposition of the emperor ; but he was immecli- 
atelj invited, by Count Romanzoff, to a diplomatic 
dinner, in a style of the highest splendor. Among the 
company was the French ambassador, M. de Caulain- 
court, Duke de Vicence, the foreign ministers then at 
the Russian Court, and many of the nobility. In the 
mansion of the Chancellor Mr. Adams had dined in 
1781, as secretary of Mr. Dana, in the same sjDlendid 
style, with the Marquis de Verac, at that time French 
minister at the Russian Court. His mind was more 
impressed with the recollection of the magnificence 
he had then witnessed on the same spot, and with 
reflections on the mutability of human fortune, than 
with the gorgeous scene around him. 

The Emperor Alexander received Mr. Adams alone, 
in his cabinet, and expressed his pleasure at seeing 
him at St. Petersburg. My. Adams, on presenting 
his credentials, said that the President of the United 
States had desired him to express the hope that his 
mission would be considered as a proof of respect for 
the person and character of his majesty, as an acknowl- 
edgment of the many testimonies of good-will he had 
already given to the United States, and of a desire 
to strengthen commercial relations between them 
and his provinces. The emperor replied, that, in 
everything depending on him, he should be happy to 
contribute to the increase of their friendly relations ; 
that it was his wish to establish a just system of mar- 
itime rights, and that he should adhere invariably to 
those he had declared. He then entered into a confi- 
dential exposition of the obstacles then existing to a 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 47 

general pacification, and of ilie policy of the different 
European powers, and said that he considered the sys- 
tem of the United States towards them as wise and 
just. Mr. Adams replied, tliat the United States, 
being a great connnercial and pacific nation, were 
deeply interested in a system which would give secur- 
ity to commerce in time of war. It was hoped this 
great blessing to humanity would be accomplished 
by his imperial majesty himself; and that the United 
States, by all means consistent with their peace, and 
their separation fi'om the political system of Europe, 
W'ould contribute to the support of the liberal princi- 
ples to wdiich his majesty had expressed so strong 
and just an attachment. The emperor replied, that 
between Russia and the United States there could be 
no interference of interests, no cause for dissension ; 
but that, by means of commerce, the two states might 
be greatly useful to each other ; and his desire was to 
give the greatest extension and facility to these means 
of mutual interest. Passing to other topics, he made 
many inr[uiries relative to the cities of the United 
States. 

The empress and the empress mother each gave 
Mr. Adams a private audience ; and, after Mrs. Adams 
had also been presented to the imperial family, they 
were invited to a succession of splendid entertain- 
ments. " Tlie formalities of these court presenta- 
tions," Mr. Adams remarked, "are so trilling and 
insignificant in themselves, and so impcn^tant in the 
eyes of princes and courtiers, that they are much 
more embarrassing to an American than business of 



48 MEMOIR OP JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

greater importance. It is not safe or prudent to 
despise them, nor practicable for a person of rational 
understanding to value them." 

As the balls and parties given by the emperor, the 
foreign ministers, and the nobility, did not usually 
terminate until four o'clock in the morning, they so 
essentially interfered with the studies and official 
engagements of Mr. Adams, that he determined, as 
far as his station permitted, to relinquish attending 
them. 

In December he requested the Chancellor to solicit 
the emperor to interpose his good offices with the 
Danish government for the restoration of American 
property sequestrated in the ports of Holstein. Count 
RomanzofT, in reply, stated that the emperor took 
great pleasure in complying with that request, and 
was gratified by this opportunity to show his friendly 
disposition towards the United States, and immedi- 
ately ordered the Chancellor to represent to the Danish 
government the wish of the emperor that the Amer- 
ican property might be examined and restored as 
soon as possible. The Danish government acceded 
at once to the emperor's desire ; and the effect of 
his interposition was gratefully acknowledged by the 
Americans whose property was liberated. 

The residence of Mr. Adams in Russia was during 
an eventful period. The Emperor Alexander was at 
first endeavoring to avoid a collision with Bonaparte, 
by yielding to his policy ; and afterwards, on his inva- 
sion, was engaged in driving him out of Russia, bereft 
of his army and continental influence. During these 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 49 

years the release or relief of American vessels and 
seamen from the efi'eets of the French emperor's l>er- / 
lin and Milan decrees, and from other seizures au<l 
sequestrations, were the cliief objects to which Mr. 
Adams directed his attention. 

His subsequent attempts to establish permanent 
commercial relations between the United States and 
Russia were favorably received by that government. 
The chancellor of the empire. Count Romanzoff, 
acknowledged the importance of a treaty between 
Russia and the United States, and intimated that the 
only obstacle was the convulsed state of opinion at thiit 
period throughout the commercial world, which Avas 
such that "it hardly seemed possible to agree to any- 
thing which had common sense in it." Count Ro- 
manzoff conducted towards My. Adams not only with 
official respect, but with cordiality. On one occasion 
he transmitted to him by his private secretary a 
work relative to an armed neutrality, which was pre- 
paring under his auspices for publication, requesting 
the American minister to make such observations upon 
it as he thought proper. 

The courteous manners of the Emperor Alexander, 
his apparent desire to conciliate the United States, 
and the personal intercourse to which he admitted 
its representative, were frequently acknowledged ])y 
Mr. Adams. In the midst of the splendor of the Rus- 
sian Court, and the magnificent entertainments of its 
ministers and of resident plenipotentiaries, some of 
whom expended fifty thousand roubles a year, and the 
ambassador from the French emperor over four hun- 

4 



50 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

dred thousand, he maintained the siuiplicity of style 
suited at once to his salary and to the character of 
the country he represented. Loans to an indefinite 
amount were proffered to him by mercantile houses. 
These he uniformly declined, though under circum- 
stances of great temptation to accept them. " The 
opportunities," he wrote, "of thus anticipating my 
regular income, it is difficult to resist. But I am 
determined to do it. The whole of my life has been 
one continued experience of the difficulty of a man's 
adhering to the principle of living within his income ; 
the first and most important principle of private econ- 
omy. In this country beyond all others, and in my 
situjation more than any other, the temptations to 
expense amount almost to compulsion. I have with- 
stood them hitherto, and hope for firmness of charac- 
ter to withstand them in future." 

In connection with this topic, the following anec- 
dote was related by Mr. Adams : " As I was walking, 
this morning (in May, 1811), I w\as met by the empe- 
ror, who was also walking. As he approached he 
said, ' Monsieur Adams, il y a cent ans que je ne 
vous ai vu,' and took me cordially by the hand. 
After some common observations, he asked me whether 
I intended to take a house in the country this sum- 
mer. I said ' No ; th[it I had for some time that 
intention, but I had given it up.' — 'And why ? ' said 
he. I w^as hesitating upon an answer, when he 
relieved me from my embarrassment by saying, 
* Peut-etre sont-ce des considerations de finance.' As 
he said it in perfect good humor, and with a smile, I 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCVT ADAMS. 51 

replied, in the same manner, ' Mais, Sire, elles y sont 
pour line bonne partie.' — 'Fort bien,' said he, ' vous 
avez raison. II faut toujours proportionner la dcpense 
a la recette ; ' a maxim," remarks Mr. Adams, " wor- 
thy of an emperor, though few emperors practise 
upon it." 

The customs, manners, and habits, of the no1)ility 
and the people ; their public institutions, edifices, 
monuments, and collections in the fine arts ; the over- 
weening influence of the clergy, their power and polit- 
ical subserviency ; the character of the foreign minis- 
ters, and the policy of the courts they represented, 
were carefully observed and noted down for future 
thouiiht and illustration. 

Nor were his researches restricted to subjects of 
diplomatic duty, or to objects inunediately connected 
with his foreign relations. He studied the language 
and history of Russia, the course and usages of its 
trade, especially in rehition to China, and made labo- 
rious inquries into the proportions of Russian, English, 
and French weights, measures, and coins. In obtain- 
ing a minute accuracy in these proportions, he em- 
ployed many hours ; on which he observed, " I fear I 
shall never attain them, and the usefulness of which 
is at least problematical ;* but ' Trahit sua quemqve 
ipsa voluntas ; ' my studies generally command me — 
I seldom control them." 

The progress of the seasons in Russia, the rising 
and the setting of the sun, were daily noted, as also 

*The Report of Mr. Adams, Avlien Secretary of State, on weights Jiml meas- 
ures, at the call of Congress, sufKciently evidences the ultimate usefulness of 
tliese researches. 



62 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAxMS. 

the variation of the climate, by the thermometer. His 
thirst for knowledge, and his desire of investigating 
causes and effects, were never satiated. 

Astronomy w^as with him a subject of early and 
intense interest. He studied the works of Schubert, 
Lalande, Biot, and Lacroix, and constantly observed 
the heavens, and noticed their phenomena, according 
to the calendar. By Langlet's and Dufresnoy's tables 
he attempted to ascertain with precision the Arabian 
and Turkish computations of time, comparing them 
with those of Christian nations. From astronomy and 
chronology he was drawn into the study of mathe- 
matics, and the logarithms in the tables of Collet. 

Neither were the works of the ancient pliilosophers 
and orators omitted in the sphere of his studies. The 
works of Plato, the orations of Demosthenes, Isocra- 
tes, J^schines, and Cicero, were not only read, but 
made the subject of critical analysis, comparison, and 
reflection. 

Eeligion w^as also in his mind a predominating ele- 
ment. A practice, which he prescribed to himself, 
and never omitted, of reading daily five chapters in 
the Bible, familiarized his mind with its pages. In 
connection with these studies he read habitually the 
works of Butler, Bossuet, Tillotson, Massillon, Atter- 
bury, and Watts. With such an ardor for knowledo-e, 
and universality in its pursuit, it is not surprising that 
he should say, as on one occasion he did, ''I feel 
nothing like the tediousness of time. I suffer nothing? 
like ejinui. Time is too short for me, rather than too 
long. If the day was forty-eight hours, instead of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 5S 

twenty-four, I could employ theni all, if I had but 
eyes and hands to read and write." 

In 1810, citizens of the United States, who had 
formed a settlement on the north-west coast of North 
America, were embarrassed in their intercourse with 
China, by the Chinese mistaking American for Rus- 
sian vessels. In a conversation with Mr. Adams on 
the means of avoiding this difBculty, Count Romanzoff 
described the obstacles the Russians had experienced 
in their commerce with China. He stated that in 
the reign of Catharine II. the Emperor of China 
complained of a governor of a province bordering 
on Russia, as "a bad man; " in consequence of 
M^hich, the empress caused him to be removed. 
This concession did not satisfy the Chinese emperor, 
who declared the punishment insufficient, and de- 
manded that '■''the offender should be impaled alive by 
ivay of atonement." This demand so shocked Catha- 
rine that she issued an edict prohibiting her subjects 
from all commercial relations with China. This edict 
continued in force until the Chinese themselves sought 
for a renewal of their former intercourse, when the 
empress yielded her resentment to policy. 

The loss of time from the civilities and visits of 
his numerous diplomatic associates was annoying to 
Mr. Adams. " I have been engaged," he wrote, " the 
whole forenoon ; and though I rise at six o'clock, I 
am sometimes unable to find time to write only part 
of a private letter in the course of the day. These 
visits take up so much of my time, that I sometimes 
think of taking a resolution not to receive them ; but, 



54 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAxMS. 

on the other hand, so much information important to 
be possessed, and particuhirly relative to current polit- 
ical events, is to be collected from them, that they 
are rather to be encouraged than discountenanced." 

*'The French ambassador," writes Mr. Adams, 
" assured me that he hoped the difference between his 
country and mine would soon be settled, and requested 
me to inform my government that it was the desire of 
the Emperor of France, and of his ministers, to come to 
the best terms with the United States ; that they knew 
our interests were the same, but he was perfectly per- 
suaded that, if any other person but Gen. Armstrong 
was there, our business might be settled entirely to our 
satisfaction. I told him that, as I was as desirous 
that we should come to a good understanding, I regret- 
ted very much that anything personal to General 
Armstrong should be considered by his government as 
offensive ; that I was sure the government of the 
United States would regret it also, and would wish, 
on learning it, to be inibrmed what were the occasions 
of displeasure which he had given. ' C'est d'abord 
un tris galant homine,' said the ambassador; 'but 
he never shows himself, and upon every little occasion, 
when by a verbal explanation with the minister Gen- 
eral Armstrong might obtain anything, he writes 
peevish notes.' This appears to me," observes Mr. 
Adams, " an intriguing manoeuvre, of which the min- 
ister thinks I might be made the dupe." 

On one occasion. Count Ronianzoff requested an 
interview with Mr. Adams, and, among other inquiries, 
asked what could be done to restore freedom and 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIxNCY ADAMS. 60 

security to commerce. lie replied, th;it, "setting 
aside all official character and responsibility, and 
speaking as an individual upon public affairs," as 
Count Romanzoir had requested, he thought the 
best coarse towards peace was for his excellency to 
convince the French government that the continental 
system, as they called it, and as they managed it, was 
promoting to the utmost extent the views of England, 
and, instead of impairing her commerce, was securing 
to her that of the whole world, and was pouring into 
her lap the means of continuing the war just as long 
as her ministers should consider it expedient. He 
could hardly conceive that the Emperor Napoleon was 
so blind as not to have made that discovery already. 
Three years' experience, with the effects of it becom- 
ing every day more flagrant, had made the inference 
too clear and unquestionable. The Emperor Napoleon, 
with all his power, could neither control the elements 
nor the passions of mankind. He had found his own 
brother could not or would not carry his system into 
execution, and had finally cast at his feet the crown 
he had given him, rather than continue to be his 
instrument any longer. Count Romanzoff gravely 
questioned the statement of Mr. Adams respecting the 
commercial prosperity of England, but admitted his 
views in general to be correct, saying that, as long 
as a system was agreed upon, he thought exceptions 
from it ought not to be allowed. Mr. Adams then 
iisked him how that was possible, when the Emperor 
Napoleon himself was the first to make such excep- 
tions, and to give licenses for a direct trade with 



5G MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

England ? Connt Romanzoff replied, that he thought 
all such licenses wrong, and he believed that there 
were not so many of them as was pretended. There 
was indeed one case of a vessel coming to St. Peters- 
burg both with an English license and a license from 
the Emperor Napoleon. He was of opinion that 
she ought to be confiscated for having the English 
license. But the French commercial and diplomatic 
agents were very desirous that she might go free, on 
account of her French license ; and perhaps the Em- 
peror, in consideration of his ally, might so determine. 
Romanzoflf complained bitterly that all the ancient 
established principles, both of commercial and polit- 
ical rectitude, had, in a manner, vanished from the 
^vorld ; and observed that, with all her faults, England 
had the advantage over her neighbors, of having 
hitherto most successfully resisted all the innovations 
upon ancient principles and establishments. For his 
own part, since he had been at the head of affiiirs, 
he could sincerely protest one wish had been at the 
bottom of all his policy, and the aim of all his labors, 
— and that was universal peace. 

In 1811 Mr. Adams received from the Secretary of 
State a commission of an Associate Justice of the 
Supreme Court of the United States ; an appointment 
which he immediately declined. 

In 1812 the emperor directed Count Romanzoff to 
inquire whether, if he should offer his mediation to 
effect a pacification between the United States and 
Great Britain, Mr. Adams was aware of any objeoiion 
on the part of his government. He replied, that, 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 57 



speaking only from a general knowledge of its senti- 
ments, the proposal of the emperor would be consid- 
ered a new evidence of his regard and friendship for 
the United States, Avhntever determination might he 
formed. Under this assurance, the offer was made, 
transmitted, and immediately accepted. Tu July, 
1833, Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Bayard, being associated 
with Mr. Adams on tliis mission, arrived at St. Pe- 
tersburg, bringing credentials, for the purpose of 
commencing a negotiation, under the mediation of the 
emperor. 

On communicating these credentials to Count Ro- 
manzoff, Mv. Adams informed him that he had received 
instructions from the American government to remain 
at St. Petersburg under the commission he had hereto- 
fore held ; and that he had been mistaken in supposing 
that his colleagues had other destination, independent 
of this mission. His conjecture had been founded on 
the doubt whether the President would have appointed 
this mission solely upon the supposition that the medi- 
ation would be accepted by the British government ; 
bat he was now instructed that the President, con- 
sidering the acceptance of the British government 
as probable, though aware that if they should reject 
it this measure might wear the appearance of precip- 
itation, thought it more advisable to incur that risk 
than the danger of prolonging unnecessarily the war 
for six or nine months, as might happen if the British' 
should immediately have accepted the mediation, and 
he should have delayed this step until he was informed 
of it. It was with the President a great object to 



58 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

manifest, not only a cheerful acceptance on the part 
of the United States, but in a signal manner his sen- 
timents of consideration and respect for the emperor, 
and to do honor to the motives on which he offered his 
mediation. After hearing these statements of Mr. 
Adams, the emperor directed Count Romanzoff to 
express his particular gratification with the honorable 
notice the American government had taken of his 
offer to effect a pacification between Great Britain and 
the United States. 

In September Lord Cathcart delivered to the empe- 
ror a memoir from the British government, stating at 
length their reasons for declining any mediation in 
their contest with the United States. But, althongh 
the British government did not choose that a third 
power should interfere in this controversy, it had 
offered to treat directly with the American envoys at 
Gottenburg, or in London. 

This proposition having been accepted by the United 
States, Mr. Adams was associated with Bayard, Clay, 
and Russell, in the negotiation. After taking leave of 
the empress and Count Romanzoff, — the emperor being 
then before Paris with the allied armies, — he quitted 
St. Petersburg on the 28th of April, 1814. His fam- 
ily remained in that city, and he travelled alone to 
Revel. There he received the new^s of the taking of 
Paris, and the abdication of Napoleon. From thence 
he embarked for Stockholm. 



CHAPTER IV. 

RESIDENCE AT GHENT AT PARIS — IN LONDON. — PRESENTATION TO 

THE PRINCE REGENT. NEGOTIATION WITH LORD CASTLEKEAGH. 

APPOINTED SECRETARY OF STATE. LEAVES ENGLAND. 

Mr. Adams arrived in Stockliolm on the 24th of 
May, and after visiting Count Engerstrjui, the Minis- 
ter of Foreign Affairs, and meeting the Swedish and 
foreign ministers at a diplomatic dinner, given by 
Baron Strogonoff, he left that city on the 2d of June. 
A messenger from Mr. Clay informed' him that, at the 
request of Lord Bathurst, the negotiation of the treaty 
of peace had been transferred to Ghent. Passing 
through Sweden, he embarked from Gottenburg in the 
United States corvette John Adams for the Texel, 
landed at the Holder, and proceeded through Holland 
to Ghent, where his associates met for the first time 
in his apartments on the 30th of June. The British 
commissioners did not arrive until the 7th of August, 
and their negotiations were not concluded until the 
24th of December, 1814. On presenting three copies 
of the treaty, signed and sealed by all the commission- 
ers, to Mr, Adams, and on receiving three from him, 
Lord Gambler said, he trusted the result of their labors 
would be permanent. Mr. Adams replied, he hoped 



J 



60 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

it would be the last treaty of peace between Great 
Britain and the United States. 

The American commissioners were presented to the 
Prince of Orange, the sovereign of the Netherhmds, 
and, on the 5th of January, 1815, the citizens of 
Ghent celebrated the ratification of the treaty, by 
inviting the representatives of both nations to a public 
entertainment at the Hotel de Ville. Mr. Adams left 
that city with characteristic expressions of gratitude 
for the result of a negotiation which he hoped would 
prove propitious to the union and best interests of his 
country. 

On the 3d of February he arrived in Paris, and 
met the American commissioners, and with them 
was presented by Mr. Crawford, resident minister of 
the United States, to Louis the Eighteenth, and to the 
Duke and Duch%ss of AngoulCme. He was also pre- 
sented to the Duke of Orleans, at the Palais Royal, 
who spoke with grateful remembrance of hospitalities 
he had received in America. Mr. Adams was often 
in the society of Lafayette, Madame de Stael, Hum- 
boldt, Constant, and other eminent persons, and was 
deeply interested in observing the effect of all changes 
in the laws and government of France. 

The intelligence that Napoleon had left Elba soon 
caused great excitement and anxiety in Paris, which 
continued to increase until the morning of the 20th of 
March, when Louis the Eighteenth left the Tuileries. 
In the evening Napoleon alighted there so silently, 
that Mv. Adams, who was at the Theatre Francais, 
not a quarter of a mile distant, was unaware of the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Gl 

fact until the next day, when the gazettes of Paris, 
which had showered execrations upon him, announced 
" the arrival of his majesty, the Emperor, at his pal- 
ace of the Tuileries." In the Place du Carousel Mr. 
Adams, in his morning walk, saw regiments of cav- 
alry, belonging to the garrison of Paris, which had 
been sent out to oppose Kapoleon, pass in review 
before him, their helmets and the clasps of their belts 
yet glowing with the arms of the Bourbons. The 
theatres assumed the title of Imperial, and at the 
opera, in the evening, the arms of the emperor were 
placed on the curtain and on the royal box. 

A few days afterwards, Mr. Adams requested an 
interview with the emperor's Minister of Foreign 
Affairs, the Duke de Vicence, with whom he had been 
previously acquainted at St. Petersburg. He assured 
Mr. Adams that the late revolution had been effected 
w^ithout eifort ; that Fouche, the new Minister of 
Police, who received reports from every part of the 
country, informed him that there had not been one act 
of violence or resistance. He said, that if Napoleon 
had not returned, the misconduct of the Bourbons 
would have caused an insurrection of the people in 
less than six months ; that the emperor had renounced 
all ideas of extended conquest, and only desired peace 
with all the world. Mr. Adams expressed a hope 
that the relations between France and the United 
States would become friendly and mutually advan- 
tageous, and said he was awaiting orders from his 
government, and should soon need a passport to Eng- 
land. The duke assured him of his readiness to 



G2 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

comply with any request from him or from Mr. Craw- 
ford. All the other foreign ministers had already 
quitted Paris. 

After Mrs. Adams had arrived from St. Petersburg-, 
Mr. Adams, having been appointed American minister 
at the British Court, left Paris, with his fomily, on 
the IGth of May, 1815. About the time of his 
departure he observed : "War appears to be certain. 
The first thought of the inhabitants of Paris will be 
to save themselves. They have no attachment either 
to the Bourbons or Napoleon. They will submit qui- 
etly to the victorious party, and do nothing to support 
either." 

On the 25th of May Mr. Adams arrived in London, 
and on the 29th had an interview with Lord Castle- 
rcagh relative to the treaty of peace, and the commer- 
cial relations of Great Britain with the United States. 
The Prince Regent, at a private audience, said the 
United States might rely with full assurance on his 
determination to fulfil all engagements with them on 
the part of Great Britain. 

After the convention concerning commerce had 
been concluded, and Mr. Gallatin and Mr. Clay had 
departed, Mr. Adams removed his residence to Boston 
House, Ealing, nine miles from London, where he 
commanded time for his favorite studies, and recipro- 
cated the civilities paid to him and Mrs. Adams. He 
continued to receive in public and private the distin- 
guished attentions due to his official station and his 
personal character and attainments. The queen gave 
him a private audience, and in May, 1816, with Mrs. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. C3 

Adiims, he was present at the mamagc of the Princess 
Charlotte of Wales. His society was songht and 
highly appreciated by the most eminent men of all 
classes ; and he availed himself, with characteristic 
assiduity, of all opportunities to acquire information, 
especially that relative to the science of government, 
and the political relations of Europe. 

Some conversations and opinions his papers preserve 
tend to throw light upon his course and character. 
In reply to an inrpiiry made by Lord Holland concern- 
ing the forms and results of representation in the 
United States, Mr. Adams said that one consequence 
was that a very great proportion of their public men 
were lawyers. Lord Holland said it was precisely the 
same in England ; that the theory of their representa- 
tion in the House of Commons was bad, but perhaps 
no theory could produce a more perfect practice of 
representation of all classes and interests of the com- 
munity. Even the close boroughs often served to 
bring in able and useful men, who by a more correct 
theory would find themselves excluded. Men of prop 
erty could always make their way into Parliament by 
their wealth. Men of family might go into the House 
of Commons for a few years in youth, to get experi- 
ence of public business, and to employ time for useful 
purposes ; and there was no man of real talent who, 
in one way or another, could fail of obtaining, sooner 
or later, admission into Parliament. But a great pro- 
portion of the House of Commons were lawyers, and 
most of the business of the house was done by them. 
In the House of Lords all that was of any use was 



64 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

done by lawyers. The great practical use of the 
House of Lords was to be a check upon mischief that 
might be clone by the Commons. Many bills passed 
through that house without sufficient consideration. 
The Chancellor is under a sort of personal responsi- 
bility to examine and stop them. His character 
depends upon it. He is at the head of the nobility 
of the country, and his consideration depends upon his 
keeping this vigilant eye on the proceedings of the 
Commons. All the ordinary business of the house, 
therefore, rests upon a lawyer. 

Lord Holland observed that from what he heard the 
most defective part of our institutions was the judi- 
ciary ; which Mr. Adams admitted. 

In August, 1816, at a diplomatic dinner, given on 
St. Louis' day, by the French ambassador, the Mar- 
quis D'Osmond, Mr. Adams first met Mr. Canning, 
then recently appointed President of the Board of 
Control. At his request, he was introduced by Lord 
Liverpool to ]Mr. Adams. They both spoke of the great 
and rapid increase of the United States, and Canning 
inquired when the next presidential election would 
take place, and who would probably be chosen. Mr. 
Adams replied, Mr. Monroe. Lord Liverpool observed 
that he had heard his election might be opposed on 
account of his being a Virginian. Mr. Adams said 
that had been a ground of objection, but it would not 
avail. He afterwards remarks: "Mr. Canning, 
whose celebrity is great, and whose talents are prob- 
ably greater than those of any other member of the 
cabinet, and who has been invariably noted for his 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 05 

bitterness against the United States, seemed desirous 
to make up by an excess of civility for the feelings he 
has so constantly manifested against us." 

After reading the Gazette Extraordinary sent him 
by Lord Castlereagh, containing an account of the 
vi,ctory of Lord Exmouth, on the 27th of August, over 
the Algerines, and that the terms of capitulation had 
forced them to deliver up all their Christian slaves, 
to repay ransom-money, and to stipulate for the formal 
abolition of Christian slavery in Algiers forever, Mr. 
Adams observed, " This is a deed of real glory." 

The Lord Mayor of London introduced Mr. Adams 
to Sir Philip Francis, then the supposed author of 
the letters of Junius. On this celebrated work, on 
a subsequent occasion, Mr. Adams remarked : " Sir 
Philip Francis is almost demonstrated to be the cul- 
prit. The speeches of Lord Chatham bear the stamp 
of a mind not unequal to the composition of Junius. 
Those of Burke are of a higher order. Were it ascer- 
tained that either of them were the political assassin 
who stabbed with the dagger of Junius, I should not 
add a particle of admiration for his talents, and should 
lose all my respect for his morals. Junius was essen- 
tially a sophist. His religion was infidelity, his 
abstract ethics depraved, his temper bitterly malig- 
nant, and his nervous system timid and cowardly. 
The concealment of his name at the time when he 
wrote was the elfect of dishonest fear. The perpetu- 
ation of it could only proceed from the consciousness 
that the disclosure of his person would be discreditable 
to his fame. The object of Junius, when he began to 



66 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

write, was merely to overthrow the administration 
then in power. He attacked them in a mass and 
individually ; their measures, their capacities, their 
characters public and private ; charged them with 
every crime and every vice. Afterwards, he followed 
up his general assault by singling out, successively, 
the Dukes of Grafton and Bedford, Lord Mansfield, 
Sir William Blackstone, and the King himself. He 
magnified mole-hills into mountains, inflamed pin- 
scratches into deadly wounds, and at last abandoned 
his course in despair at the very time when he might 
have pursued it with the most effect. But while he 
was battering the ministry upon paltry topics, which 
had neither root or stem, he had declared himself 
emphatically and repeatedly upon their side on the 
only subject on which their fate and the destiny of 
the nation altogether depended — the controversy 
with America. The course he took in the early stage 
of that conflict, and his disappearance from the thea- 
tre of politics at the time when it was ripening into 
the magnitude of its nature, have marked Junius in 
my mind as a man of small things — a splendid trifler, 
a pompous and shallow politician." 

In July, 1816, Mr. Adams showed Lord Castle- . 
reagh his authority and instructions to negotiate a 
new commercial convention with the British govern- 
ment, stating "that one object was to open the trade 
between the United States and the British colonies in 
North America and the West Indies, as great changes 
had occurred since the existing convention between 
the countries was signed. That convention equalized 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 67 

the duties upon British and American vessels, in the 
intercourse between Europe and the United States, 
and thereby admitted British vessels into the ports of 
the United States upon terms of equal competition 
with American vessels. But, since that time, the 
exclusive system of colonial regulations had been 
resumed in the West Indies with extraordinary rigor. 
American vessels h;vd been excluded from all the ports, 
and some seizures had been made with such severity 
that there were cases upon which it would soon become 
his duty to address the British government in behalf 
of individuals who had suffered, and deemed themselves 
entitled to the restitution of their property. The con- 
sequence of these new regulations, as combined with 
the operation of the commercial convention, was, that 
British vessels being admitted into our ports upon 
equal terms with our own, and then being exclusively 
received in the British West India ports, not only thus 
monopolized the trade between the United States and 
the West Indies, but acquired an advantage in the direct 
trade from Europe to the United States, which defeated 
the main object of the convention itself, of placing the 
shipping of the two countries upon equal terms of 
fair competition. In North America the same system 
was pursued by the colonial government of Upper Can- 
ada. An act of the Colonial Legislature was passed at 
their last session, vesting in the Lieutenant-Governor 
and Council of the province the power of regulating 
its trade with the United States ; and immediately 
afterwards a new tariff of duties was issued, by an 
order of the previous Council, dated the 18th of April, 



68 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

laying excessively heavy duties upon all articlea 
imported into the province from the United States, 
with the exception of certain articles of provision of 
the first necessity ; and a tonnage duty of twelve and 
sixpence per ton upon American vessels, which was 
equivalent to a total prohibition." 

Lord Castlereagh said "that he had not been in the 
way of following the measures adopted in that quarter, 
and was not aware that there had been any new regu- 
lations either in the West Indies or in North America. 
In time of war he knew it had been usual to open the 
ports of the West India Islands to foreigners, merely 
as a measure of necessity ; and it was not until the 
Americans attempted to starve them by their embargo 
acts that they were driven to the resort of finding 
resources elsewhere. But in time of peace it had 
been usual to exclude foreigners from these islands." 

He then asked if the trade was considerable. Mr. 
Adams replied that it was. " Even in time of peace 
it was highly necessary to the colonies, in respect to 
some of the imports indispensable to their subsist- 
ence ; and, by the exports, extremely advantageous 
to the interests of Great Britain, by furnishing a mar- 
ket for articles which she does not take herself, and 
which could not be disposed of elsewhere. At the 
very time of the embargo, the governors of the Isl- 
ands, so far from adhering to the principle of excluding 
American vessels, issued proclamations inviting them, 
with promises even that the regular papers should not 
be required for their admission, and encouraging them 
to violate the laws of their own country by carrying 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. CO 

them supplies. In time of peace it was umloubtedly 
not so necessary. Even then, however, it was so in a 
high degree. The mother country may supply them 
in part, but does not produce some of the most impor- 
tant articles of their importation, — rice, for exam- 
ple, and Indian corn, the best and cheapest articles 
for the subsistence of negroes. Even wheat and flour, 
and provisions generally, were much more advan- 
tageously imported from the United States than from 
Europe, being so much less liable to be damaged in 
those hot climates, from the comparative shortness of 
the voyage. Another of their importations was lum- 
ber, which is necessary for buildings upon the planta- 
tions, and which, after the hurricanes to which the 
islands are frequently exposed, must be had in large 
quantities." 

Mr. Adams added, "that the American govern- 
ment did not on this ground now propose that these 
ports should be opened to their vessels. They did 
not seek for a participation in the British trade with 
them. Great Britain might still prohibit the import- 
ation from the United States of such articles as she 
chose to supply herself. But they asked that Amer- 
ican vessels be admitted equally with British vessels 
to carry the articles which could be supplied only from 
the United States, or which were supplied only to 
them. The effect of the new regulations had been 
so injurious to the shipping interest in America, ■ 
and was so immediately felt, that the first impres- 
sion on the minds of many was that they should be 
it once met by counteracting legislative measures 



70 MEMOIil OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

of prohibition. A proposal to that effect was made 
in Congress ; but it was thought best to endeavor, in 
the first instance, to come to an amicable arrange- 
ment of the subject with the British government. 
Immediate prohibitions would affect injuriously the 
British colonies ; they would excite irritation in the 
commercial part of the British communities. The 
consideration, therefore, of enacting legislative regu- 
lations, was postponed." 

Lord Castlereagh, after expressing the earnest dispo- 
sition of his government to promote harmony between 
the two countries, said "he was not then prepared to 
enter upon a discussion on the points of the question, 
but would take it into consideration as soon as possi- 
ble." 

Mr. Adams then said ' ' that the American govern- 
ment was anxious to settle by treaty all the subjects 
of collision between neutral and belligerent rights 
which, in the event of a new maritime war in Europe, 
might again arise: — blockade, contraband, searches 
at sea, and colonial trade, but most of all the case 
of the seamen, — concerning whom the American gov- 
ernment proposed that each party should stipulate not 
to employ, in its merchant ships or naval service, the 
seamen of the other." 

Lord Castlereagh inquired "whether the proposal in 
the stipulation related only to native citizens and sub- 
jects ; and, if not, how the question was to be escaped, 
— whether any act of naturalization shall avail to dis- 
charge a seaman from the duties of his original alle« 
giance." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 7l 

Mr. Adams replied, " that it was proposed to include 
in the arrangement only natives and those who are on 
either side naturalized already ; so that it would not 
extend to any hereafter naturalized. The number of 
persons included w^ould, of course, be very few." 
Lord Castlereagh inquired "what regulations w^ere 
proposed to carry the stipulation into effect." Mr. 
Adams replied, " that if it was agreed to, he thought 
there would be no difficulty in concerting regulations 
to carry it into execution ; and that the American 
government would be ready to agree to any Great 
Britain might think necessary, consistent with indi- 
vidual rights, to secure the bona fide fulfilment of the 
engagement." "But," said Lord Castlereagh, "by 
agreeing to this stipulation, is it expected we should 
abandon the right of search we have heretofore used ; 
or is this stipulation to stand by itself, leaving the 
rights of the parties as they were before?" Mr. 
Adams replied, "that undoubtedly the object of the 
American government was that the result of the stip- 
ulation should ultimately be the abandonment of the 
practice of taking men from American vessels." 
" IIow, then," said Lord Castlereagh, "shall we 
escape the old difficulty ? The people of this country 
consider the remedy we have always used hitherto 
as the best and only effective one. Such is the 
general opinion of the nation, and there is a good 
deal of feeling connected wdth the sentiment. If we 
now give up that, how will it be possible to devise any 
regulation, depending upon the performance of another 
state, which will be thought as efficacious as that we 



72 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCT ADAMS. 

have in our own hands? He knew that the policy 
of the American government had changed ; that it 
was formerly to invite and encourage British sea- 
men to enter their service, but that at present it was 
to give encouragement to their own seamen ; and he 
was in hopes that the effect of these internal legis- 
lative measures would be to diminish the necessity 
of resorting to the right of search." Mr. Adams, in 
reply, said, " that his lordship had once before made a 
similar observation, and that he felt it his duty to take 
notice of it. Being under a perfect conviction that it 
was erroneous, he was compelled to state that the Amer- 
ican government never did in any manner invite or 
encourage foreign seamen generally, or British seamen 
in particular, to enter their service." Lord Castlereagh 
said " that he meant only that their policy arose nat- 
urally from circumstances, — from the extraordinary, 
sudden, and almost unbounded increase of their com- 
merce and navigation during the late European wars ; 
they had not native seamen enough to man their ships, 
and the encouragements to foreign seamen followed 
from that state of things." Mr. Adams replied, 
" that he understood his lordship perfectly ; but what 
he asserted was his profound conviction that he was 
mistaken in point of fact. He knew not how the 
policy of any government can be manifested otherwise 
than by its acts. Now, there never was any one act, 
either of the legislature or executive, which could 
have even a tendency to invite British seamen into the 
American service." "But," said Lord Castlereagh, 
" at least, then, there was nothing done to prevent 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 73 



them." Mr. Adams replied, "That may be; but 
there is a very material distinction between giving 
encouragement and doing nothing to prevent them. 
Our naturalization laws certainly hold out to thorn 
nothing like encouragement. You naturalize every 
foreign seaman by the mere fact of two years' service 
on board of your public ships, ipso facto ^ Avithout cost, 
or form, or process. We require five years' residence 
in the United States, two years of notice in a court 
of record, and a certificate of character, before the act 
of naturalization is granted. Tlius far only may be 
admitted, — that the great and extraordinary increase 
of our commerce, to which you have alluded, had the 
effect of raising the wages of seamen excessively high. 
Our government certainly gave no encouragement to 
this ; neither did our merchants, who would surely 
have engaged their seamen at lower wages, if possi- 
ble. These wages, no doubt, operated as a strong 
temptation to your seamen to go into the American 
service. Your merchant service could not afford to 
pay them so high. The wages in the king's ships 
are much lower, and numbers of British seamen, 
accordingly, find employment on board American ves- 
sels ; but encouragement from the American govern- 
ment they never had in any manner. They were 
merely not excluded ; aiid even now% in making the 
proposal to exclude them, it is not from any change 
of policy, but solely for the purpose of giving satis- 
faction to Great Britain, and of stopping the most 
abundant source of dissension with her. It proves 



74 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

only the earnestness of our desire to be upon good 
terms with you." 

Mr. Adams said, with regard to his proposal of 
excluding each other's seamen, "that he was not pre- 
pared to say that an article could not be framed by 
which the parties might stipulate the principle of 
mutual exclusion, without at all affecting or referring 
to the rights or claims of either party. Perhaps it 
might be accomplished if the British government 
should assume it as one of the objects to be arranged 
by the convention." On which Lord Castlereagh 
said : "In that case there will not be so much diffi- 
culty. If it is a mere agreement of mutual exclusion, 
tending to diminish the occasion for exercising the 
right of search, and undoubtedly if it should prove 
effectual, it would in the end operate as an induce- 
ment to forbear the exercise of the right entirely." 

Discussions with the same nobleman on other topics 
bearing upon the commercial relations between the 
two nations are preserved among the papers of Mr. 
Adams. 

On the ICth of April, 1817, Mr. Adams received 
letters from President Monroe, with the informaticn 
that, with the sanction of the Senate, the Depart- 
ment of State had been committed to him ; a trust 
which he accepted with a deep sense of its weight and 
responsibility. In compliance with Mr. Monroe's 
request, he made immediate arrangements to return 
to the United States. On presenting his letters of 
recall to Lord Castlereagh, congratulations on his 
appointment were attended with regrets at his re- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 75 

moval from his mission. Mr. Adams stated that the 
uncertainty of his acceptance of the office of Secre- 
tary of State had prevented an immediate appoint- 
ment of his successor, but that he was instructed 
in the strongest manner to decLare the earnest desire 
of President Monroe to cultivate the most friendly 
intercourse with Great Britain. lie gave the same 
explanation to the Prince Regent, at a private audi- 
ence, who replied by an assurance of his disposition 
to continue to promote the harmony between the two 
nations which was required by the interests of both. 
There was no formality in the discourse on either side, 
and the generalities of mutual assurance were much 
alike, and estimated at their real value. In reply 
to the inquiries of the Prince, the names of the mem- 
bers of Mr. Monroe's cabinet were mentioned. He 
was not acquainted with any of them, but spoke 
in handsome terms of Mr. Thomas Pinckney and Mr. 
Ptufus King, and asked many questions concerning 
the organization of the American government. Lord 
Castlereagh, in his final interview with Mr. Adams, 
made numerous inquiries relative to the foreign rela- 
tions of the United States, especially in regard to 
Spain, and again expressed the desire of the British 
government not only to remain at peace themselves, 
but also to promote tranquillity among other nations. 
Prince Esterhazy, in a parting visit to Mr. Adams, 
also assured him that the cabinets of Europe were 
never so universally and sincerely pacific as at that 
time ; that they all had finances to redeem, ravages 
to repair, and wanted a period of long repose. 



■4 



76 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

After taking leave of his numerous friends in office 
and in private life, Mr. Adams bade farewell to Lon- 
don, and embarked with his family from Cowes, in the 
packet-ship Washington, on the 17th of June, 1817, 
for the United States. 



CHAPTER V. 

FIRST TERM OF MR. MONROE'S ADMINISTRATION. STATE OF PARTIES. 

SEMINOLE WAR. — TAKING OF PENSACOLA. — NEGOTIATION WITH 

SPAIN. — PURCUASE OF THE FLORIDAS. — COLONIZATION SOCIETY. 

THE ADMISSION OF MISSOURI INTO THE UNION. 

A TEDIOUS voyage of seven weeks was beguiled by 
Mr. Adams with Bacon's Novum Organum, the novels 
of Scott, and the game of chess, which last, in his esti- 
mate, surpassed all other resources when at sea. On 
the 7th of August he arrived at New York, with min- 
gled emotions of gratitude for the past, and anxious 
forecast of the cares and perils of the scene on which 
he was about to enter. After a detention in that 
city by official business, on the 18th of August he 
reached Quincy, Massachusetts, and enjoyed the inex- 
pressible happiness of again meeting his venerable 
father and mother in perfect health, after an absence 
of eight eventful years. In September, at Washing- 
ton, he entered upon the duties of Secretary of State. 

The foreign relations of the United States were, 
at this period, peaceful, except that questions con- 
cerning spoliations on American commerce and set- 
tlement of boundaries were depending with Spain, and 
the sympathy of the United States for her revolted 
colonies excited her jealousy and fear, which the 



78 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCiT ADAMS. 

seizure of Amelia Island, under the real or pre- 
tended authority of one of them, had tended greatly 
to increase. 

Internally, the political relations of the country 
were in a transition state. The chief power, which 
Virginia had held during three presidencies, was now 
about to pass from her hands ; there being no states- 
man among her sons who could compete, as a can- 
didate for the successorship to Monroe, with the tal- 
ents and popularity of rising aspirants in other states. 
Her policy therefore was directed to secure, for the 
next term of the presidency, a candidate friendly to 
the political dogmas she cherished, and to the inter- 
ests and projects of the Southern States. The char- 
acter and principles of Mr. Adams were not adapted to 
become subservient to her views, and she saw with 
little complacency his elevation to the office of Secre- 
tary of State, which was in popular opinion a proxi- 
mate step to the President's chair. Yet it could not 
be doubted that his appointment had the assent, if not 
the approbation, of Jefferson and Madison, without 
whose concurrence Monroe would scarcely have ven- 
tured to raise a citizen of Massachusetts to that 
station. 

The prospective change, in the principles and influ- 
ences of public affiiirs, which the close of Mr. Monroe's 
term of office would effect, elevated the hopes and 
awakened the activity of the partisans of Crawford, 
of Georgia, Clay, of Kentucky, and De Witt Clinton, 
of New York. Crawford, who had been Secretary of 
the Treasury under Madison, and who was again placed 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. /J 

ill that office by Monroe, was uiulorstood to be the 
favorite candidate of Virginia. Chiy, one of the most 
talented and popukir politicians of the period, had 
been an active supporter of Monroe for the presidency. 
Ilis friends did not conceal their disappoiiitinent 
that he was not invited to take the oHice of Secretary 
of State ; nor did he disguise his dissatisfaction at the 
appointment of Mr. Adams. In New York, De "VVitt 
Clinton, in his struggles with Van Buren for ascend- 
ency in that state, by one of those mysterious changes 
to which political tempests are subject, had been at 
one moment cast out of the mayoralty of the city, 
and at the next into the governor's chair. His parti 
sans, deeming his position and popularity now favorable 
to his elevation to the presidency, which he had long 
desired and once attempted to attain, placed him in 
nomination for that office. 

Each of these candidates possessed great personal 
and local popularity, spirit and power adapted to 
success, and adherents watcliful and efficient. To 
cope with all these rival influences, Mr. Adams had 
talents, integrity, fidelity to his country, and devotion 
to the fulfilment of official duty, in which he had no 
superior. Having been absent eight years in foreign 
countries in public service, he had no Southern or 
Western current in his favor ; and that which set 
from the North, thougli generally favorable, being 
divided, was comparatively feeble, and rather acqui- 
escent in his elevation than active in promoting it. 

On his appointment as Secretary of State, Mr. 
Adams remarked: " Whether it is for my own good 



80 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

is known only to God. As yet I have far more reason 
to lament than rejoice at the event ; yet I feel not 
less my obligation to Mr. Monroe for his confidence in 
me, and the duty of personal devotion to the success 
of his administration which it imposes." Before the 
lapse of a year that administration was assailed in 
Congress and in the newspapers, and the attacks were 
concentrated on Mr. Adams. The calumnies by which 
his father's administration had been prostrated five- 
and-twenty years before were revived, and poured 
out with renewed malignity. Duane, in his Aurora, 
published in Philadelphia, and his coadjutors in other 
parts of the Union, represented him as "a royalist," 
*' an enemy to the rights of man ; " as a " friend of 
oligarchy ; " as a " misanthrope, educated in contempt 
of his fellow-men ; " as " unfit to be the minister of 
a free and virtuous people." Privately, and through 
the press, Mr. Monro'e was warned that he " was full 
of duplicity;" "an incubus on his prospects for the 
next presidency, and on his popularity." When these 
calumnies were uttered, as some of them were, in the 
House of Kepresentatives, they naturally excited the 
indignation of Mr. Adams, and the anxiety of his 
friends. Being asked by one of them whether it 
would not be advisable to expose the conduct and 
motives of rival statesmen, in the newspapers, he 
answered explicitly in the negative, saying: "The 
execution of my duties is the only answer I can give 
to censure. I will do absolutely nothing to promote 
any pretensions my friends may think I have to the 
presidency." On being told that his rivals would 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 81 

not be so scrupulous, and that ho wouhl not stand on 
an eijual footing with them, lie replied : " That is 
not my i'ault. My business is to serve the public to 
the best of my abilities in the station assigned to me, 
and not to intrigue for my own advancement. I never, 
by the most distant hint to any one, expressed a wish 
for any public office, and I shall not now begin to ask 
for that which, of all others, ought to be most freely 
and spontaneously bestowed." 

Among the difficulties incident to the office of Sec- 
retary of State, that of making appointments was the 
most annoying and thankless. They were sought with 
a bold and rabid pertinacity. Success was attributed 
to the favor of the President ; ill success, to the influ- 
ence of the Secretary. AVhen the applicant was a 
relative his patronage was naturally expected ; but, 
with every expression of good- will, he avoided all 
recommendation in such cases, saying that such claims 
must be presented through other channels. 

The attention of the government was early drawn 
to the proceedings of the Seminole Indians, who had 
commenced hostilities with circumstances of great 
barbarity. Orders were sent to General Jackson to 
repair to the seat of war with such troops as he could 
collect, and the Georgia militia, and to reduce the 
Indians by force, pursuing them into Florida, if t!iey 
should retreat for refuge there. 

About this time the republic of Buenos Ayres sent 
an agent urging an acknowledgment of their inde- 
pendence. Their claim was in unison with the pop- 
ular feeling in the South ; ))ut elsewhere throughout 

6 



82 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the nation public opinion was divided, as were also 
the members of the President's cabinet. Mr. Adams 
declared himself against such recognition, as it 
would interfere with a negotiation with Spain for 
the purchase of the Floridas. He urged, also, that 
McGregor, the adventurer, who, under a pretence of 
authority from Buenos Ayres, had taken possession 
of Amelia Island, should be compelled to withdraw 
his troops by a naval force sent for that purpose. 
On this measure, also, both the nation and the cabi- 
net were divided. Mr. Clay, in the House of Rep- 
resentatives, took ground in opposition to the policy 
of the administration, avowing openly his intention 
of bringing forward a motion in favor of recognizing 
the independence of Buenos Ayres. To control or 
overthrow the executive by the weight of the House 
of Representatives, was apparently his object.* 

* A committee appointed by the House of Representatives, on McGregor's 
possession of Amelia Island, waited on Mr. Adams, and inquired concerning 
the proposed proceedings of the executive, and his powers in that respect. 
Mr. Adams took occasion to state and explain to them the effects of " the 
secret laws, as they were called, and which," lie said, " were singular anom- 
alies of our system, having grown out of that error in our constitution which 
confers upon the legislative assemblies the power of declaring war, which, in 
the theory of government, according to Montesquieu and Rousseau, is strictly 
an executive act. But, as we have made it legislative, whenever secrecy is 
necessary for an operation of the executive involving the question of peace 
and war. Congress must pass a secret law to give the President power. Now, 
secrecy is contrary to one of the first principles of legislation, but the absurd- 
ity flows from having given to Congress, instead of the executive, the power 
of declaring war. Of these secret laws there are four, and one resolution ; 
and one of the laws, that of the 28th of June, 1812, is so secret, that to 
this day it cannot be found among the rolls of the department. Another 
consequence has followed from this clumsy political m.achinery. The injunc- 
tion of secrecy was removed on the 6th of July, 1812, from the laws previ- 
ously passed by a vote of the House of Representatives, and yet the laws have 
never been published." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 83 

In Janiiaiy, 1818, McGregor and his freebooters 
having been driven, by the authority of the executive, 
from Amelia Island by the United States troops, a 
question arose whether they shoukl be withdrawn, 
or possession of the island retained, subject to 
future negotiations with Spain. Mr. Adams and 
Mr. Calhoun advocated the latter opinion. The Pres- 
ident, Mr. Crowninshield, and Mr. Wirt, were in favor 
of withdrawing the troops. After discussion of a mes- 
sage proposed to be sent to Congress avowing the 
intention to restore the island to Spain, the subject 
was left undetermined, the President being embar- 
rassed concerning the policy to be pursued, by the 
division of his constitutional advisers. On which Mr. 
Adams remarked: "These cabinet councils open 
upon me a new scene, and now views of the political 
w^orld. Here is a play of passions, opinions, and 
characters, different from those in which I have been 
accustomed heretofore to move." 

About this time the President received information 
that the Spanish government were discouraged, and 
that Onis, the Spanish minister, had received author- 
ity to dispose of the Floridas to the United States on 
the best terms possible. This intelligence Mr. jMon- 
roe communicated to Mr. Adams, and requested him 
to see the Spanish minister, and inquire what Spain 
would take for all her possessions east of the Missis- 
sippi. When Mr. Adams obtained an interview with 
Onis, he waived any direct answer to the question, 
and asked what were the intentions of the United 
States relative to the occupation of Amelia Island. 



84 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Mr. Adams replied, that this was a mere measure of 
self-defence, and asked what guarantee Onis could 
give that the freebooters would not again take pos- 
session, to the annoyance of lawful commerce, if the 
troops of the United States were removed. Onis said 
he could give none, except a promise to write to the 
Governor of Havana for troops ; but he admitted 
that, if sufficient force could there be obtained, six 
or seven months might elapse before they could be 
sent to Amelia Island. A continuance of the present 
occupation by the United States was thus rendered 
unavoidable. The consideration of the question of 
restoring it to Spain was postponed in the cabinet, and 
the message of the President to Congress was so mod- 
ified as to state his intention of keeping possession 
of it for the present. 

During the remainder of this session Mr. Clay 
took opposition ground on all the cardinal points 
maintained by the President, especially on the consti- 
tutional question concerning internal improvements, 
and upon South American affliirs. Ilis course was 
so obviously marked with the design of rising on the 
ruins of Mr. Monroe's administration, that one of his 
own papers in Kentucky publicly stated that "he 
had broken ground within battering distance of the 
President's message." In a speech made on the 24th 
of March, 1817, on the general appropriation bill, he 
moved an appropriation of eighteen thousand dollars 
as one year's salary and an outfit for a minister to the 
government of Buenos Ayres. This was only a mode 
of proposing a formal acknowledgment of that gov- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 85 

ernment. The motion was soon after rejected in the 
House of Representatives by a great majority, and 
his attempt to make manifest the unpopuhirity of the 
administration proved a failure. 

In July, 1818, news came that General Jackson 
had taken Pensacohi by storm, — a measure which 
excited universal surprise. But one opinion appeared 
at first to prevail in the nation, — that Jackson had not 
only acted without, but against, his instructions ; that 
he had commenced war upon Spain, which could not 
be justified, and in which, if not disavowed by the 
administration, they would be abandoned by the coun- 
try. Every member of the cabinet, the President 
included, concurred in these sentiments, with the ex- 
ception of My. Adams. He maintained that there was 
no real, though an apparent violation of his instruc- 
tions ; that his proceedings were justified by the 
necessity of the case, and the misconduct of the 
Spanish commandant in Florida. Mr. Adams ad- 
mitted that the question was embarrassing and com- 
plicated, as involving not merely an actual war with 
Spain, but also the power of the executive to author- 
ize hostilities without a declaration of war by Con- 
gress. He averred that there was no doubt that 
defensive acts of hostility might be authorized by the 
executive, and on this ground Jackson had been 
authorized to cross the Spanish frontier in pursuit of 
the Indian enemy. His argument was, that the ques- 
tion of the constitutional authority of the executive 
was in its nature defensive ; that all the rest, even 
to the taking the fort of Barancas by storm, was 



86 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

incidental, deriving its character from the object^ 
which was not hostility to Spain, but the termination 
of the Indian war. This was the justification offered 
by Jackson himself, who alleged that an imagi- 
nary air-line of the thirty-first degree of latitude could 
not afford protection to our frontier, while the Indians 
had a safe refuge in Florida ; and that all his opera- 
tions had been founded on that consideration. 

This state of things embarrassed the negotiation 
with the Spanish minister, who was afraid, under 
these circumstances, to proceed without receiving 
instructions. Mr. Adams endeavored, however, to 
satisfy Onis, by assuring him that Pensacola had been 
taken without orders ; but he also stated that no 
blame would be attached to Jackson, on account of 
the strong charges he brought against the Governor 
of Pensacola, who had threatened to drive him out of 
the province by force, if he did not withdraw. In 
support of these views, Mr, Adams adduced the opin- 
ions of writers on national law. To the members of 
the cabinet he admitted that it was requisite to carry 
the reasoning on his principles to the utmost extent 
they would bear, to come to this conclusion ; yet he 
maintained that, if the question were dubious, it was 
better to err on the side of vigor than of weakness, 
of our own officer than of our enemy. There was 
a large portion of the public who coincided in opin- 
ion with Jackson, and if he were disavowed, his 
friends would assert that he had been sacrificed be- 
cause he was an obnoxious man ; that, after having 
had the benefit of his services, he was abandoned fur 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 87 

the sake of conciliating the enemies of his country, 
and his case would be compared to that of Sir Wal- 
ter Raleigh. 

Mr. Monroe listened with candor to the debates 
of the cabinet, without varying from his original 
opinion. They resulted in a disclaimer of power in 
the President to have authorized General Jackson to 
take possession of Pensacola. On this determination, 
Mr. Adams finally gave up his opposition, and acqui- 
esced in the opinion of every other member of the 
cabinet, remarking on this result : " The adnunistra- 
tion are placed in a dilemma, from which it is impos- 
sible for them to escape censure by some, and factious 
crimination by many. If they avow and approve 
Jackson's conduct, they incur the double responsibility 
of having made a war against Spain, in violation of 
the constitution, without the authority of Congress. 
If they disavow him, they must give olTence to his 
friends, encounter the shock of his popularity, and 
have the appearance of truckling to Spain. For all 
this I should be prepared ; but the mischief of this 
determination lies deeper. 1. It is weakness, and 
confession of weakness. 2. The disclaimer of power 
in the executive is of dangerous example, and of evil 
consequences. 3. There is injustice to the officer in 
disavowing him, when in principle he is strictly justi- 
fiable. These charges will be urged with great vehe- 
mence on one side, while those who would have cen- 
sured the other course will not support or defend the 
administration for taking this. I believe the other 
would have been a safer and a bolder course." A 



88 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

wish having been expressed that it should be stated 
publicly that the opinion of the members of the cab- 
inet had been unanimous, Mr. Adams said that he had 
acquiesced in the ultimate determination, and would 
cheerfully bear his share of the responsibility ; but 
that he could not in truth say it had been conformable 
to his opinion, for that had been to approve and 
justify the conduct of Jackson, whereas it was disa- 
vowed, and the place he had taken was to be uncon- 
ditionally restored. 

At this time Mr. Adams was laboriously collecting 
evidence in support of these views, and preparing 
letters of instruction to George Erving, dated the 19th 
of November, in which Jackson's conduct is fully 
stated, and the execution of Arbuthnot and Ambris- 
ter and the taking of Pensacola defended. Mr. Jef- 
ferson wrote to President Monroe expressing in the 
highest terms his approbation of these letters, and the 
hope that those of the 12th of March and the 28th 
of November to Erving, with, also, those of Mr. 
Adams to Onis, would be translated into French, and 
communicated to every court in Europe, as a thorough 
vindication of the conduct and policy of the American 
government. Writing about the affiiirs of Florida at 
this tii;ie, Mr. Adams observed: "With these con- 
cerns, (political, personal, and electioneering intrigues 
are mingling themselves, with increasing heat and vio- 
lence. This government is assuming daily, more and 
more, a character of cabal and preparation, not for 
the next presidential election, but for the one after, 
that is working and counterworking, with many of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 80 

the worst features of elective mouarchies. Jackson 
has made for himself a multitude of friends, and still 
more enemies, "x^ 

In the latter part of December, 1818, when Gen- 
eral Jackson visited Washington, a strong party man- 
ifested itself disposed to bring him forward as a 
candidate for the next Presidency. " llis services 
during the last campaign," said Mr. Adams, " would 
have given him great strength, had he not counter- 
acted these dispositions by several of his actions in 
Florida. / The partisans of Crawford and Dc Witt 
Clinton took the alarm, and began their attacks upon 
Jackson for the purpose of running him down. His 
conduct is beginning to be arraigned with extreme 
violence in every quarter of the Union, and, as I am 
his official defender against Spain and England, I 
shall come in for my share of the obloquy so liberally 
bestowed upon him." 

Mr. Adams had the satisfaction of receiving from 
Hyde de Neuvillo, the French minister, an assurance 
of his coincidence of opinion with him, and that he 
had written to his own government that the proceed- 
ings of General Jackson had been right, particularly 
in respect of the two Englishmen. Although there 
was a difference of opinion on the subject among the 
members of the diplomatic body, he declared that his 
own was that such incendiaries and instigators of 
savage barbarities should be put to death. 

On one occasion, the President expressed to Mr. 
Adams his astonishment at the malignancy of the 
reports which some newspapers were circulating con- 



90 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

cerning him, and asked in wliat motives they could 
have originated. Mr. Adams replied, that the mo- 
tives did not lie very deep ; that there had been a 
spirit at work, ever since he came to Washington, 
very anxious to find or make occasions of censure 
upon him. That spirit he could not lay. His only 
resource was to pursue his course according to his 
own sense of right, and abide by the conser^uences 
To which the President fully assented. 

While these events were agitating the political 
world, Mr. Adams was called to lament the death of 
his mother, dear to his heart by every tie of affection 
and gratitude. His feelings burst forth, on the occa- 
sion, in eloquent and touching tributes to her memory. 
" This is one of the severest afflictions," he exclaimed, 
" to which human existence is liable. The silver cord 
is broken, — the tenderest of natural ties is dissolved, 
— life is no longer to me what it was, — my home is 
no longer the abode of my mother. While she lived, 
whenever I returned to the paternal roof, I felt as if 
the joys and charms of childhood returned to make 
me happy ; all was kindness and affection. At once 
silent and active as the movement of the orbs of 
heaven, one of the links which connected me with 
former ages is no more. May a merciful Providence 
spare for many future years my only remaining 
parent ! " 

The policy of the friends and enemies of Mr. Mon- 
roe's administration was developed by the debates in 
the House of Representatives on the Seminole war, 
and the spirit of intrigue began to operate with great 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 91 

publicity. Some of the Western friends uf Mr. Adams 
proposed to him measures of counteraction, on which 
he remarked; "These overtures afford opportunities 
and temptations to intrigue, of which there is much 
in this government, and without wiiich the prospects 
of a public man are desperate. Caballing with mem- 
bers of Congress for future contingency has become 
so interwoven with the practical course of our gov- 
ernment, and so inevitably flows from the practice of 
canvassing by the members to fix on candidates for 
President and Vice-President, that to decline it is to 
pass a sentence of total exclusion. Be it so ! What- 
ever talents I possess, that of intrigue is not among 
them. And instead of toiling for a future election, 
as I am recommended to do, my only wisdom is to 
prepare myself for voluntary, or unwilling, retire- 
ment." On the same topic, in February, 1819, he 
thus expressed himself: "The practice wdiich has 
grown up under the constitution, but contrary to its 
spirit, by which members of Congress meet in caucus 
and determine by a majority the candidates for the 
Presidency and Vice-Presidency to be supported by 
the whole meeting, places the President in a state 
of undue subserviency to the members of the legisla- 
ture ; which, connected with the other practice of 
reelecting only once the same President, leads to a 
thousand corrupt cabals between the members of Con- 
gress and heads of departments, who are thus made, 
almost necessarily, rival pretenders to the succession. 
The only possible chance for a head of a department 
to attain the Presidency is by ingratiating himself 



92 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

with the members of Congress ; and as many of them 
have objects of their own to obtain, the temptation is 
immense to corrupt coalitions, and tends to make all 
the public offices objects of bargain and sale." 

The treaty with Spain, by which the United States 
acquired the Floridas, was signed by Onis and Adams 
on the 22d of December, 1819. To effect this treaty, 
so full of difficulty and responsibility, Mr. Adams had 
labored ever since he had become Secretary of State. 
His success was to him a subject of intense gratifica- 
tion ; especially the acknowledgment of the right of 
the United States to a definite line of boundary to the 
South Sea. This right was not among our claims by 
the treaty of peace with Great Britain, nor among our 
pretensions under the purchase of Louisiana, for that 
gave the United States only the range of the Missis- 
sippi and its waters. Mr. Adams regarded the attain- 
ment of it as his own ; as he had first proposed it on 
his own responsibility, and introduced it in his discus- 
sions with Onis and De Neuville. Its final attainment, 
under such circumstances, was a just subject of exult- 
ation, which was increased by the change of relations 
which the treaty produced with Spain, from the high- 
est state of exasperation and imminent war, to a fair 
prospect of tranquillity and secure peace. The treaty 
was ratified by the President, with the unanimous 
advice of the Senate. 

In 1819 a committee of the Colonization Society 
applied to the President for the purchase of a terri- 
tory on the coast of Africa, to which the slaves res- 
cued under the act of Congress, then recently passed, 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 9 



f> 



against piracy and the slave-trade, might be sent. 
The subject being referred to Mr. Adams, he stated 
in reply that it was impossible that Congress could 
have intended to authorize the purchase of territory 
by that act, for they had only appropriated for its 
object one hundred thousand dollars, which was a 
sum utterly inadequate for the purchase of a territory 
on the coast of Africa. He declared also that he had 
no opinion of the practicability or usefulness of the 
objects proposed by the Colonization Society, of estab- 
lishing in Africa a colony composed of the free blacks 
sent from the United States. "The project," said 
he, "is professedly formed, 1st, without making use 
of any compulsion on the free people of color to go to 
Africa. 2d. To encourage the emancipation of slaves 
by their masters.- 3d. To promote the entire abolition 
of slavery ; and yet, 4th, without in the slightest 
degree affecting what they call ' a certain species of 
property in slaves.' There are men of all sorts and 
descriptions concerned in this Colonization Society : 
some exceedingly humane, weak-minded men, who 
really have no other than the professed objects in 
view, and who honestly believe them both useful and 
attainable ; some speculators in official profits and 
honors, which a colonial establishment would of course 
produce ; some speculators in political popularity, who 
think to please the abolitionists by their zeal for eman- 
cipation, and the slaveholders by the flattering hope 
of ridding them of the free colored people at the public 
expense ; lastly, some cunning slaveholders, who see 
that the plan may be carried far enough to produce 



94 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the effect of raising the market price of their slaves. 
But, of all its other difficulties, the most objectionable 
is that it obviously includes the engrafting a colonial 
establishment upon the constitution of the United 
States, and thereby an accession of power to the na- 
tional government transcending all its other powers." 

The friends of the measure urged in its fiivor that it 
had been recommended by the Legislature of Virginia. 
They enlarged on the happy condition of slaves in that 
state, on the kindness with which they were treated, 
and on the attachment subsisting between them and 
their masters. They stated that the feeling against 
slavery was so strong that shortly after the close of 
the Revolution many persons had voluntarily emanci- 
pated their slaves. This had introduced a class of 
very dangerous people, — the free blacks, — who lived 
by pilfering, corrupted the slaves, and produced such 
pernicious consequences that the Legishiture was 
obliged to prohibit their further emancipation by law. 
The important object now was to remo^'e the free 
blacks, and provide a place to which the emancipated 
slaves might go ; in which case, the legal obstacles* 
to emancipation being withdrawn, Virginia, at least, 
might in time be relieved from her black population. 

A committee from the Colonial Society also waited on 
Mr. Adams, repeating the same topics, and maintain- 
ing that the slave-trade act contained a clear authority 
to settle a colony in Africa ; and that the purchase of 
Louisiana, and the settlement at the mouth of Colum- 
bia River, placed beyond all question the right of 
acquiring territory as existing in the government of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 95 

the United States. Mr. Adams, in reply, successfully 
maintained that the slave-trade act had no reference 
to the settlement of a colony on the coast of Africa ; 
and that the acquisition of Louisiana, and the settle- 
ment at the mouth of Columbia River, being in terri- 
tories contiguous to and in continuance of our own, 
could by no reason warrant the purchase of countries 
beyond seas, or the establishment of a colonial system 
of government subordinate to and dependent upon that 
of the United States. 

In July, 1819, Mr. Adams, writing concerning the 
failure at the preceding session of Missouri to obtain 
admission as a state into the Union, from the restric- 
tion, introduced by the House of Representatives, 
excluding slavery from its constitution, thus expressed 
himself: "The attempt to introduce that restriction 
produced a violent agitation among the members from 
the slaveholding states, and it has been communi- 
cated to the states themselves, and to the territory of 
Missouri. The slave-drivers, as usual, whenever this 
topic is brought up, bluster and bully, talk of the 
white slaves of the' Eastern States, and the dissolution 
of the Union, and of oceans of blood ; and the North- 
ern men, as usual, pocket all this hectoring, sit down 
in quiet, and submit to the slave-scourging republi- 
canism of the planters." 

Being urged to use his influence that the language 
and policy of the government should be as moderate 
and guarded as possible, from the consideration that 
both England and France were profoundly impressed 
with the idea that we were an ambitious, encroaching 



96 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

people, Mr. Adams replied: "I doubt if we should 
give ourselves any concern about it. Great Britain, 
who had been vilifying us for twenty years as a low-' 
minded nation, with no generous ambition, no God but 
gold, had now changed her tune, and was endeavoring 
to alarm the world at the gigantic grasp of our ambi- 
tion. Spain and all Europe were endeavoring to do 
the same ; being startled at first by our acquisition of 
Louisiana, and now by our pretensions to extend to the 
South Sea. Nothing we can say will remove this im- 
pression until the world shall be familiarized with the 
idea of considering the continent of North America to 
be our proper dominion. From the time we became an 
independent people, it was as much a law of nature 
that this should become our pretension, as that the Mis- 
sissippi should flow to the sea. Spain had pretensions 
on our southern. Great Britain on our northern bor- 
ders. It was impossible that centuries should elapse 
without finding them annexed to the United States ; 
not from any spirit of encroachment or of ambition on 
our part, but because it was a physical, and moral, and 
political absurdity, that such fragments of territory, 
with sovereigns fifteen hundred miles beyond sea, 
worthless and burdensome to their owners, should exist, 
permanently, contiguous to a great, powerful, enter- 
prising, and rapidly-growing nation. Most of the ter- 
ritories of Spain in our neighborhood had become ours 
by fair purchase. This rendered it more unavoidable 
that the remainder of the continent should ultimately 
be ours. It was but very lately we had seen this 
ourselves, or that we had avowed the pretension of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 97 

extending to the South Sea ; and, until Europe finds 
it to be a settled geographical element that the United 
States and North America are identical, any effort on 
our part to reason the world out of the belief that we 
are an ambitious people will have no other effect 
than to convince them that we add to our ambition 
hypocrisy." 

Concerning the discords which arose in the cabinet, 
on policy to be pursued, Mr. Adams remarked: "I 
see them with pain, but they are sown in the practice 
which the Virginia Presidents have taken so much 
pains to engraft on the constitution of the Union, 
making it a principle that no President can be more 
than twice elected, and whoever is not thrown out 
after one term of service must decline being a candi- 
date after the second. This is not a principle of the 
constitution, and I am satisfied it ought not to be. 
Its inevitable consequence is to make every adminis- 
tration a scene of continuous and furious electioneer- 
ing for the succession to the Presidency. It was so 
through the whole of Mr. Madison's administration, 
and it is so now." 

The signature of the treaty for the acquisition of 
Florida, sanctioned by the unanimous vote of the Sen- 
ate, had greatly contributed to the apparent popularity 
of Mr. Monroe's administration. But the postpone- 
ment of its ratification by Spain soon clouded the 
prospect ; and the question whether Missouri should 
be admitted into the Union as a slave or free state, in 
which Mr. Adams took a deep interest, immediately 
rendered the political atmosphere dark and stormy. 



98 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

"There is now," Mr. Adams observed, " every ap- 
pearance that the shive question will be carried by the 
superior ability of the slavery party. For this much 
is certain, that if institutions are to be judged by their 
results in the composition of the councils of the Union, 
the slaveholders are much- more ably represented than 
the simple freemen. With the exception of Rufus 
King, there is not, in either house of Congress, a 
member from the free states able to cope in powers of 
the mind with William Pinkney and James Barbour. 
In the House of Representatives the freemen have 
none to contend on equal terms either with John Ran- 
dolph or Clay. Another misfortune to the free party 
is that some of their ablest men are either on this 
question with their adversaries, or lukewarm in the 
cause. The slave men have indeed a deeper imme- 
diate stake in the issue than the partisans of freedom. 
Their passions and interests are more profoundly agi- 
tated, and- they have stronger impulses to active 
energy than their antagonists, whose only individual 
interest in this case arises from its bearing on the 
balance of political power between the North and 
South." 

The debate on this subject commenced in the Sen- 
ate. In the course of January and February, 1820, 
Rufas King, senator from New York, delivered two 
of the most well-considered and powerful speeches 
that this Missouri question elicited. The remarks they 
drew forth from Mr. Adams render it proper that some 
idea of their general course should be stated, although it 
is impossible that any abstract can do justice to them. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 99 

Disclaiming all intention to encourage or assent to any 
measure that would affect the security of property in 
slaves, or tend to disturb the political adjustment 
which the constitution had established concerning 
them, he enters at large into the power of Congress to 
make and determine whatever regulations are needful 
concerning the territories. He maintained that the 
power of admitting new states is by the constitution 
referred wholly to the discretion of Congress ; that 
the citizens of the several states have rights and 
duties, differing from each other in the respective 
states ; that those concerning slavery are the most 
remarkable — it being permitted in some states, and 
prohibited in others ; that the question concerning 
slavery in the old states is already settled. Congress 
had no power to interfere with or change whatever has 
been thus settled. The slave states are free to con- 
tinue or abolish slavery. The constitution contains 
no provision concerning slavery in a new state ; 
Congress, therefore, may make it a condition of the 
admission of a new state that slavery shall forever be 
prohibited within it. 

Mr. King then enters upon the history of the United 
States relative to this subject, and to the rights of the 
citizens of Missouri resulting from the terms of the 
cession of Louisiana, and of the act admitting it into 
the Union. From this recapitulation and illustration 
he demonstrates, beyond refutation, that Congress 
possesses the power to exclude slavery from j\Iissouri. 
The only question now remaining was to show that it 
ought to exclude it. In discussing this point, Mr 



100 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

King passes over in silence arguments which to some 
might appear decisive, but the use of which in the 
Senate of the United States would call up feelings that 
he apprehended might disturb or defeat the impartial 
consideration of the subject. 

Under this self-restraint he observed that slavery, 
unhappily, exists in the United States ; that enlight- 
ened men in the states where it is permitted, and 
everywhere out of them, regret its existence among 
us, and seek for the means of limiting and of eradicat- 
ing it. He then proceeds to state and reason concern- 
ing the difficulties in the apportionment of taxes among 
the respective states under the old confederation, and 
in the convention for the formation of the constitution, 
which resulted in the provision that direct taxes 
should be apportioned among the states according to 
the whole number of free persons and three fifths of 
the slaves which they might respectively contain. 
The effect of this provision he then analyzes, and 
shows that, in consequence of it, jive free persons in 
Virginia have as much power in the choice of repre- 
sentatives, and in the appointment of presidential 
electors, as seven free persons in any of the states in 
which slavery does not exist. At the time of the 
adoption of the constitution no one anticipated the 
fact that the whole of the revenue of the United States 
would be derived from indirect taxes ; but it was 
believed that a part of the contribution to the common 
treasury would be apportioned among the states, by 
the rule for the apportionment of representatives. 
The states in which slavery is prohibited ultimately, 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 101 

tlioiigli with reluctance, acquiesced in the dispropor 
tionate number of representatives and electors that was 
secured to the slaveholding states. The concession 
was at the time believed to be a great one, and has 
proved the greatest which was made to secure the 
adoption of the constitution. Great as is this conces- 
sion, it was definite, and its full extent was compre- 
hended. It was a settlement between the thirteen 
states, and not applicable to new states which Con- 
gress might be willing to admit into the Union. 

The equality of rights, which includes an equality 
of burdens, is a vital principle in our theory of gov- 
ernment. . The effect of the constitution has been 
obvious in the preponderance it has given to the slave- 
holding states over the other states. But the exten- 
sion of this disproportionate power to the new states 
would be unjust and odious. The states whose power 
would be abridged and whose burdens would be 
increased by the measure would not be expected to 
consent to it. The existence of slavery impairs the 
industry and power of a nation. In a country where 
manual labor is performed by slaves, that of freemen 
is dishonored. In case of foreign war, or domestic 
insurrection, slaves not only do not add to, but dimin- 
ish the faculty of self-defence. 

If Missouri, and the states formed to the west of 
the River Mississippi, are permitted to introduce and 
establish slavery, the repose, if not the security, of 
the Union, may be endangered. All the states south 
of the River Ohio, and west of Pennsylvania and Del- 
aware, will be peopled with slaves ; and the establish- 



102 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

ment of new states west of the River Mississippi will 
serve to extend slavery, instead of freedom, over that 
boundless region. But, if slavery be excluded from 
Missouri and the other new states which may be formed 
in that quarter, not only will the slave-markets be 
broken up, and the principles of freedom be extended 
and strengthened, but an exposed and important fron- 
tier will present a barrier which will check and keep 
back foreign assailants, who may be as brave, and, as 
w^e hope, as free as ourselves. Surrounded in this 
manner by connected bodies of freemen, the states 
where slavery is allowed will be made more secure 
against domestic insurrection, and less liable to be 
aifected by what may take place in the neighboring 
colonies. 

At the delivery of these speeches ]\Ir. Adams was 
present, and thus expressed his opinion in writing : 
" I heard Mr. King on what is called the Missouri 
question. Ilis manner was dignified, grave, ear- 
nest, but not rapid or vehement. There was noth- 
ing new in his argument, but he unravelled with 
ingenious and subtle analysis many of the sophistical 
V tissues of slaveholders. He laid* down the position 
of the natural liberty of man, and its incompatibility 
with slavery in any shape ; he also questioned the 
constitutional right of the President and Senate to 
make the Louisiana treaty ; but he did not dwell upon 
those points, nor draw the consequences from them 
which I should think important. He spoke on that 
subject, however, with great power, and the great 
slaveholders in the house gnawed their lips and 
clenched their fists as they heard him." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 103 

"At our evening parties," he adds, " we hear of 
nothing but the Missouri question and Mr. King's 
speeches. The slaveholders cannot hear of thcni 
without being seized with the cramps. They call 
them seditious and inflammatory, which was far from 
being their character. Never, since human sentiment 
and human conduct were influenced by human speech, 
was there a theme for eloquence like the free side of 
this question, now before the Congress of the Union. 
By what fatality does it happen that all the most elo- 
quent orators are on its slavish side? There is a 
great mass of cool judgment and of plain sense on 
the side of freedom and humanity, but the ardent 
spirits and passions .are on the side of oppression. 
! if but one man could arise with a genius capable 
of comprehending, a heart capable of supporting, and 
an utterance capable of communicating, those eternal 
truths wdiich belong to the question, — to lay bare in all 
its nakedness that outrage upon the goodness of God, 
human slavery, — now is the time, and this is the 
occasion, upon which such a man would perform the 
duties of an angel upon earth." 

About this time Mr. Calhoun remarked to Mr. 
Adams, that he did not think the slave question, 
then pending in Congress, would produce a dis- 
solution of the Union, but, if it should, the South 
would, from necessity, be compelled to form an alli- 
ance, offensive and defensive, with Great Britain. 
Mr. Adams asked if that would not be returning to 
the old colonial state. Calhoun said. Yes, pretty 
much, but it would be forced upon them. Mr. Adams 



104 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

inquired whether he thought, if by the effect of this 
alliance, offensive and defensive, the population of 
the North should be cut off from its natural outlet 
upon the ocean, it would fall back upon its rocks, 
bound hand and foot, to starve ; or whether it would 
retain its power of locomotion to move southward by 
land. Mr. Calhoun replied, that in the latter event 
it would be necessary for the South to make their 
communities all military. Mr. Adams pressed the 
conversation no further, but remarked : "If the disso- 
lution of the Union should result from the slave ques- 
tion, it is as obvious as anything that can be fore- 
seen of futurity, that it must shortly afterwards be 
followed by an universal emancipation of the slaves. 
A more remote, but perhaps not less certain conse- 
quence, would be the extirpation of the African race 
in this continent, by the gradually bleaching process 
of intermixture, where the white is already so pre- 
dominant, and by the destructive process of emanci- 
pation ; which, like all great religious and political 
reformations, is terrible in its means, though happy 
and glorious in its end. Slavery is the great and foul 
stain on the American Union, and it is a contempla- 
tion worthy of the most exalted soul, whether its 
total abolition is not practicable. This object is vast 
in its compass, awful in its prospects, sublime and 
beautiful in its issue. A life devoted to it would be 
nobly spent or sacrificed." 

On the 2Gth of February, Mr. John Randolph 
spoke on the Missouri question in the House of Rep- 
resentatives between three and four hours, on which 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 105 

speech Mr. Adams observed: ("As usual, it had 
neither beginning, middle, nor end. Egotism, Vir- 
ginian aristocracy, slave-purging liberty, religion, lit- 
erature, science, wit, fancy, generous feelings, and 
malignant passions, constitute a chaos in his mind, 
from which nothing orderly can ever flow. Clay, the 
Speaker, twice called him to order ; which proved 
useless, for he can no more keep order than he can 
keep silence." y On the 1st of March the Missouri 
question came to a crisis in Congress. The majorities 
in both branches were on opposite sides, and in each 
a committee was raised to effect a compromise. This 
endeavor resulted in the abandonment by the House of 
Representatives of the principle it had inserted, that 
slavery should be prohibited in the Missouri consti- 
tution, and in annexing a section that slavery should 
be prohibited in the remaining parts of the Louis- 
iana cession, north of latitude thirty-six degrees thirty 
minutes. This compromise, as it was called, was 
finally carried in the House of Representatives, by a 
vote of ninety to thirty-seven, after several success- 
ive days, and almost nights, of stormy debate. 

On the 3d of jNIarch, a member of the house from 
]\Iassachusetts told Mr. Adams that John Randolph 
had made a motion that morning to reconsider one 
of the votes of yesterday upon the Missouri bill, and 
of the trickery by w^hich his motion was defeated. 
The Speaker (Mr. Clay) declared it when first made 
not in order, the journal of yesterday's proceedings 
not having been then read ; and while they were 
reading the journal, the clerk of the house carried the 



106 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

bill as passed by the house to the Senate ; so that^ 
when Randolph, after the reading of the journal, 
renewed his motion, it was too late, the papers being 
no longer in the possession of the house. " And so 
it is," said Mr. Adams, "that a law perpetuating 
slavery in Missouri, and perhaps in North America, 
has been smuggled through both houses of Congress. 
I have been convinced, from the first starting of this 
question, that it could not end otherwise. The fault 
is in the constitution of the United States, which has 
sanctioned a dishonorable compromise with slavery. 
There is henceforth no remedy for it but a reorganiza- 
tion of the Union, to effect which a concert of all the 
white states is indispensable. Whether that can ever 
be accomplished is doubtful. It is a contemplation 
not very creditable to human nature that the cement 
of common interest, produced by slavery, is stronger 
and more solid than that of unmingled freedom. In 
this instance the slave states have clung together in 
one unbroken phalanx, and have been victorious by the 
means of accomplices and deserters from the ranks of 
freedom. Time only can show whether the contest 
may ever, with equal advantage, be renewed ; but, so 
polluted are all the streams of legislation in regions 
of slavery, that this bill has been obtained by two 
as unprincipled artifices as dishonesty ever devised. 
One, by coupling it as an appendage to the bill for 
admitting Maine into the Union ; the other, by the 
perpetrating this outrage by the Speaker on the rules 
of the house." 

Mr. Calhoun, after a debate in the cabinet on the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 107 

Missouri question, said to Mr. Adams tliat the prin- 
ciples avowed by him were just and noble, but in the 
Southern country, whenever they were mentioned, they 
were always understood as applying to wliite men. 
Domestic labor was confined to the blacks ; and such 
was the prejudice that, if he were to keep a white ser- 
vant in his house, although he was the most popular 
man in his district, his character and reputation would 
be irretrievably ruined. Mr. Adams replied that 
this confounding the ideas of servitude and labor was 
one of the bad effects of slavery. Mr. Calhoun 
thought it was attended with many excellent conse- 
quences. It did not apply to all sorts of labor ; not, 
for example, to farming. He, himself, had often held 
the plough. So had his father. Manufacturing and 
mechanical labor was not degrading. It was only 
menial labor, the proper work of slaves. No white 
person could descend to that. And it was the best 
guarantee of equality among the whites. It produced 
an unvarying level among them. It not only did not 
excite, but did not admit of inequalities, by wdiich 
one white man could domineer over another. 

Mr. Adams replied, that he could not see things in 
the same light. "It is in truth all perverted senti- 
ment ; mistaking labor for slavery, and dominion for 
freedom. The discussion of this Missouri question has 
betrayed the secret of their souls. In the abstract they 
admit slavery to be an evil. They disclaim all partici- 
pation in the introduction of it, and cast it all on the 
shoulders of ' old grandame Great Britain.' But, when 
probed to the quick upon it, they show at the bottom 



108 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCT ADAMS. 

of their souls pride and vain-glory in their very con- 
dition of masterdom. They fancy themselves more 
generous and noble-hearted than the plain freemen, 
who labor for subsistence. They look down on the 
simplicity of Yankee manners, because they have no 
habits of overbearing like theirs, and cannot treat 
negroes like dogs. It is among the evils of slavery 
that it taints the very source of moral principle. It 
establishes false estimates of virtue and vice ; for 
Avhat can be more false and heartless than this doc- 
trine, which makes the first and holiest rights of 
humanity to depend on the color of the skin? It 
perverts human reason, and reduces man endowed 
with logical powers to maintain that slavery is sanc- 
tioned by the Christian religion ; that slaves are 
happy and contented in their condition ; that between 
the master and slave there are ties of mutual attach- 
ment and affection ; that the virtues of the master 
are refined and exalted by the degradation of the 
slave ; while, at the same time, they vent execrations 
on the slave-trade, curse Great Britain for having 
given them slaves, burn at the stake negroes con- 
victed of crimes for the terror of the example, and 
writhe in agonies of fear at the very mention of 
human rights as applicable to men of color." 

"The impression produced on my mind," continued 
Mr. Adams, "by the progress of this discussion, is, 
that the bargain between freedom and slavery con- 
tained in the constitution of the United States is 
morally and politically vicious ; inconsistent with the 
principles on which alone our Revolution can be 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 109 

justified ; cruel and oppressive, by riveting the chains 
of slavery, by pledging the faith of freedom to main- 
tain and perpetuate the tyranny of the master ; and 
grossly unequal and impolitic, by admitting that slaves 
are at once enemies to be kept in subjection, property 
to be secured and returned to their owners, and per- 
sons not to be represented themselves, but for whom 
their masters are privileged with nearly a double share 
of representation. The consequence has been that 
this slave representation has governed the Union. 
Benjamin's portion above his brethren has ravined as 
a wolf. In the morning he has devoured the prey, 
and in the evening has divided the spoil. It would 
be no difficult matter to prove, by reviewing the 
history of the Union under this constitution, that 
almost everything which has contributed to the honor 
and welfare of this nation has been accomplished in 
despite of them, or forced upon them ; and that every- 
thing unpropitious and dishonorable, including the 
blunders of their adversaries, may be traced to them. 
I have favored this Missouri compromise, believing it 
to be all that could be effected under the present con- 
stitution, and from extreme unwillingness to put the 
Union at hazard. But perhaps it would have been a 
wiser and bolder course to have persisted in the 
restriction on JNIissouri, until it should have terminated 
in a convention of the states to revise and amend the 
constitution. This would have produced a new Union 
of thirteen or fourteen states unpolluted with slavery, 
with a great and glorious object, that of rallying to 
their standard the other states, by the universal 



110 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

emancipation of their slaves. If the Union must be 
dissolved, slavery is precisely the question upon which 
it ought to break. For the present, however, this 
contest is laid asleep." 

Again he says : "Mr. King is deeply mortified at 
the issue of the Missouri question, and very naturally 
feels resentful at the imputations of the slaveholders, 
that his motives on this occasion have been merely 
personal aggrandizement, — ' close ambition varnished 
o'er with zeal.' The imputation of bad motives is one 
of the most convenient weapons of political, and indeed 
of every sort of controversy. It came originally from 
the devil. — ' Doth Job serve God for naught? ' The 
selfish and the social passions are intermingled in the 
conduct of every man acting in a public capacity. It 
is right that they should be so. And it is no just 
cause of reproach to any man, that, in promoting to 
the utmost of his power the public good, he is desir- 
ous, at the same time, of promoting his own. There 
are, no doubt, hypocrites of humanity as well as of 
religion ; men with cold hearts and warm professions, 
trading upon benevolence, and using justice and vir- 
tue only as stakes upon the turn of a card or the cast 
of a die. But this sort of profligacy belongs to a 
state of society more deeply corrupted than ours. 
Such characters are rare among us. Many of our 
public men have principles too pliable to popular 
impulse, but few are deliberately dishonest ; and there 
is not a man in the Union of purer integrity than 
Rufus King. 

"The most remarkable circumstance in the history 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. Ill 

of the final decision of the Missouri question is thut it 
was ultimately carried against the opinions, wishes, 
and interests, of the free states, by the votes of their 
own members. They had a decided majority in both 
houses of Congress, but lost the vote by disunion 
among themselves. The slaveholders clung together, 
without losing one vote. Many of them, and almost 
all the Virginians, held out to the last, even against 
compromise. The cause of the closer union on the 
slave side is that the question affected the individual 
interest of every slaveholding member, and of almost 
every one of his constituents. On the other side, indi- 
vidual interests were not implicated in the decision at 
all. The impulses were purely republican principle 
and the rights of human nature. The struggle for 
political power, and geographical jealousy, may fairly 
be supposed to have operated equally on both sides. 
The result affords an illustration of the remark, how 
much more keen and powerful the impulse is of per- 
sonal interest than is that of any general consideration 
of benevolence and humanity." 

The compromise, by which Missouri was admitted 
into the Union, did not finally settle the question in 
Congress. At the next session it reappeared, in 
consequence of the insertion into, the constitution of 
Missouri of an article declaring it to be the duty of 
the Legislature to pass laws prohibiting free negroes 
and persons of color from coming into jNIissouri ; 
which declaration was directly repugnant to that 
article in the constitution of the United States which 
provides that the citizens of each state shall be entitled 



112 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

to all privileges and immunities of citizens of the othei 
states. Tlic only mode of getting out of this difficulty, 
said Mr. Adams, was "for Congress to pass a reso- 
lution declaring the State of Missouri to be admitted 
from and after the time when the article repugnant 
to the constitution of the United States should be 
expunged from its constitution. This question was 
much more clear against Missouri than was that of 
their first admission into the Union ; but the people 
of the North, like many of their representatives 
in Congress, began to give indications of a disposition 
to flinch from the consequences of this question, and 
to be unwilling to bear their leaders out." 

Mr. Adams, in conversation with one of the senators 
of the South, observed, that " the article in the Mis- 
souri constitution is directly repugnant to the rights 
reserved to every citizen in the Union in the consti- 
tution of the United States. Its purport is to disfran- 
chise all the people of color who were citizens of the 
free states. The Legislatures of those states are bound 
in duty to protect the rights of their own citizens ; and 
if Congress, by the admission of Missouri with that 
clause in her constitution, should sanction this outrage 
upon those rights, the states a portion of whose citizens 
should be thus casj^ out of the pale of the Union would 
be bound to vindicate them by retaliation. If I were 
a member of the Legislature of one of these states, I 
would move for a declaratory act, that so long as the 
article in the constitution of Missouri, depriving the 
colored citizens of the state (say) of Massachusetts of 
their rights as citizens of the United States within 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 113 

the State of Missouri, should subsist, so long the white 
citizens of Missouri should be hold as aliens within the 
Cunmionwealth of Massachusetts, and not entitled to 
chum or enjoy, within the same, any right or privilege 
of a citizen of the United States." And Mr. Adams 
said he would go further, and declare that Congress, 
by their sanction of the Missouri constitution, by 
admitting that state into the Union w'ithout excepting 
against that article which disfranchised a portion of the 
citizens of Massachusetts, had violated the constitution 
of the United States. Therefore, until that portion 
of the citizens of Massachusetts whose rights w^ere vio- 
lated by the article in the Missouri compromise should 
be redintegrated in the full enjoyment and possession 
of those rights, no clause or article of the constitution 
of the United States should, within the Commonwealth 
of Massachusetts, be so understood as to authorize any 
person whatsoever to claim the property or possession 
of a human being as a slave ; and he w^ould prohibit 
by law the delivery of any fugitive upon the claim of 
his master. All which, he said, should be done, not to 
violate, but to redeem from violation, the constitution 
of the United States. It was indeed to be expected 
that such law^s would again be met by retaliatory 
laws of Missouri and the other slaveholding states, 
and the consequences w^ould be a dissolution de facto 
of the Union ; but that dissolution would be com- 
menced by the article in the Missouri constitution. 
That article," declared Mr. Adams, "is itself a dis- 
solution of the Union. If acquiesced in, it will change 
the terms of the federal compact — change its terms 

8 



114 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

by robbing thousands of citizens of their rights. And 
what citizens ? The poor, the unfortunate, the help- 
less, akeady cursed by the mere color of their skin ; 
already doomed by their complexion to drudge in 
the lowest offices of society ; excluded by their color 
from all the refined enjoyments of life accessible to 
others ; excluded from the benefits of a liberal edu- 
cation, — from the bed, the table, and all the social 
comforts, of domestic life. This barbarous article 
deprives them of the little remnant of right yet left 
them — their rights as citizens and as men. Weak 
and defenceless as they are, so much the more sacred 
the obligation of the Legislatures of the states to 
which they belong to defend their lawful rights. I 
would defend them, should the dissolution of the Union 
be the consequence ; for it would be, not to the de- 
fence, but to the violation of their rights, to which all 
the consequences would be imputable ; and, if the 
dissolution of the Union must come, let it come from 
no other cause but this. If slavery be the destined 
sword, in the hand of the destroying angel, which is 
to sever the ties of this Union, the same sword will 
cut asunder the bonds of slavery itself." 

"In the House of Representatives, on the 4th of 
December,' writes Mr. Adams, "Mr. Eustis, of Mas- 
sachusetts, made a speech against the resolution for 
admitting Missouri into the Union without condi- 
tion, and it was rejected, ninety-three to seventy-nine. 
On the 10th of December he offered a resolution 
admitting Missouri into the Union conditionally ; 
namely, ' from and after the time when they shall 



MEMOIR OF JOnX QUINCY ADAMS. 115 

have expunged from their constitution the article 
repugnant to the constitution of the United States.' 
On the 24th of January, 1821, this resohition was 
rejected by a vote of one hundred and forty-six to 
six. It satisfies neither party. It is too strong for 
the slave party, and not strong enough for the free 
party." In December and January the subject was 
ardently debated in the House of Representatives, 
and, after commitment and various attempts at amend- 
ment, on the loth of February the report of a com- 
mittee of the House of Representatives in favor of 
admitting Missouri into the Union, in conformity with 
the resolution which had passed the Senate, was 
rejected, eighty-five to eighty. 

The iH'oceedings of the House of Representatives, 
in counting the votes for President nnd Vice-Presi- 
dent, are thus stated by Mr. Adams : "On the 14th 
of February, while the electoral votes for President 
and Vice-President were counting, those of Missouri 
were objected to because Missouri was not a state of 
the Union — on which a tumultuous scene arose. 
A Southern member moved, in face of the rejection 
by a majority of the House, that Missouri is one of 
the states of this Union, and that her votes ought to 
be counted. ]Mr. Clay avoided the question by mov- 
ing that it should lie on the table, and then that a 
message should be sent to the Senate informing them 
that the House were now ready to proceed in continu- 
ing the enumeration of the electoral votes, according 
to the joint resolution ; which was orderetl. The 
Senate accordingly proceeded to open the votes of 



116 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Missouri, and they were counted. The result was 
declared by the President of the Senate, in the alter- 
native that if the Azotes of Missouri were counted there 
were two hundred and thirty-one votes for James Mon- 
roe as President, and two hundred and eighteen votes 
for Daniel D. Tompkins as Vice-President ; and if 
not counted, there would be two hundred and twenty- 
eight votes for James Monroe as President, and two 
hundred and fifteen for Daniel D. Tompkins as Vice- 
President ; but, in either event, both were elected to 
their respective offices. lie therefore declared them 
to be so elected. 

" After the two houses had separated, Mr. Randolph 
moved two resolutions : one, that the electoral votes 
of the State of Missouri had been counted, and formed 
part of the majorities by Avhich the President and 
Vice-President had been elected ; and the other, that 
the result of the election had not been declared by 
the presiding officer conformably to the constitution 
and the law, and therefore the whole proceedings had 
been irregular and illegal. This motion, after a very 
disorderly debate, was disposed of by adjournment. 
Mr. Randolph was for bringing Missouri into the Union 
by storm, and by bullying a majority of the House 
into a minority. The only result was disorder and 
tumult. 

" On the 23d of February, the Missouri question 
being still undecided, on a motion of Mr. Clay, the 
House of Representatives chose by ballot a committee 
of twenty-three members, who were joined by a com- 
mittee of seven from the Senate. Their object was a 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 117 

last attempt to devise a plan for admitting ^Missouri 
into the Union. On the 26th, the committee proposed 
a conditional admission, upon terms more humiliating 
to the people of Missouri than it would have been to 
require that they should expunge the exceptionable ar- 
ticle from their constitution ; for they declared it a fun- 
damental condition of their admission that the article 
should never be construed to authorize the passage of 
any law by which any citizen of the states of this Union 
should be excluded from his privileges under the con- 
stitution of the United States ; and they required that 
the Legislature of the state, by a soleifin public act, 
should dechire the assent of the state to this condition, 
and transmit a copy of the act, by the first jNIonday of 
November ensuing, to the President of the United 
States. But, in substance, this condition bound them 
to nothing. The resolution was, however, taken up 
this day in the House of Representatives, read three 
times, and passed by a vote of eighty-seven to eighty- 
one. On the 28th of February, the Senate, by a vote 
of twenty-eight to fourteen, adopted the resolution. 

"This second Missouri question was compromised 
like the first. The majority against the unconditional 
admission into the Union was small, but very decided. 
The problem for the slave representation to solve was 
the precise extent of concession necessary for them to 
detach from the opposite party a numl)er of anti- 
servile votes just sufficient to turn the majority. Mr. 
Clay found, at last, this expedient, which the slave 
voters would not have accepted from any one not of 
their own party, and to which his greatest difficulty 



X 



118 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

was to obtain the assent of his own friends. The 
timid and the weak-minded dropped off, one by one, 
from the free side of the question, until a majority was 
formed for the compromise, of which the servile have 
the substance, and the liberals the shadow. 

" In the progress of this affair the distinctive charac- 
ter of the inhabitants of the several great divisions of 
this Union has been shown more in relief than perhaps 
in any national transaction since the establishment of 
the constitution. It is, perhaps, accidental that the 
combination of talent and influence has been the great- 
est on the slave side. The importance of the question 
has been much greater to them than to the other side. 
Their union of exertion has been consequently closer 
and more unshakable. They have threatened and 
entreated, bullied and wheedled, until their more sim- 
ple adversaries have been half coaxed, half frightened 
into a surrender of their principles for a bauble of 
insignificant promises. The champions of the North 
did not judiciously select their position for this con- 
test. There must be, some time, a conflict on this very 
question between slave and free representation. This, 
however, was not the proper occasion for contesting 

At this period Mr. Adams considered that the 
greatest danger of the Union was in the overgrown 
extent of its territory, combining with the slavery 
question. The want of slaves was not in the lands, 
but in their inhabitants. Slavery had become in the 
South and South-western states a condition of exist- 
ence. On the falling off of the revenue, which oc- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. ll'J 

curred about this time, he observed that "it stirs up 
the spirit of economy and retrenchment ; and, as the 
expenditures of the war department are those on 
which the most considerable saving can be made, at 
them the economists level their first and principal 
batteries. Individual, personal jealousies, cnvyings, 
and resentments, partisan ambition, and private inter- 
ests and hopes, mingle in the motives which prompt 
this policy. About one half of the members of Con- 
gress are seekers of office at the nomination of the 
President. Of the remainder, at least one half have 
some appointment or favor to ask for their relatives. 
But there are two modes of obtaining their ends : the 
one, by subserviency ; the other, by opposition. These 
may be called the cringing canvass and the flouting 
canvass. As the public opinion is most watchful of 
the cringing canvass, the flouters are the most numer- 
ous party." 



CHAPTER YI. 

SECOND TERM OF MONROE'S PRESIDENCY. — STATE OF PARTIES. REPORT 

ON WEIGHTS AND MEASURES. PROCEEDINGS AT GHENT VINDICATED. 

VOTES WHEN HE WAS A MEMP.ER OF THE SENATE OF THE UNITED 

STATES DEFENDED. INDEPENDENCE OF GREECE. CONTESTS OF PAR- 
TIES. ELECTED PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 

During the second term of Mr. Monroe's Presi- 
dency, Mr. Adams continued to take his full propor- 
tion of responsibility in the measures of the adminis- 
tration. Questions concerning the Bank of the United 
States, the currency, the extinction or extension of 
slavery, the bankrupt law, the tariff, and internal 
improvements, brought into discussion the interests of 
the great States of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and New 
York, combined with the never-ceasing struggles for 
power of parties and individuals. Candidates for the 
office of President and Vice-President were brought 
into the field by their respective adherents. Every 
topic which could exalt or depress either was put in 
requisition, and office-holders and office-seekers became 
anxious and alert. 

lu July, 1821, at the request of the citizens of 
Washington, Mr. Adams delivered an address on the 
anniversary of American Independence. It did not 
receive the indulgence usually extended to such 

(120) 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 121 

efforts, but was made the occasion of severe animad- 
versions on his character and talents. In December 
his friends called his attention to caluuniies and 
aspersions copied into the City Gazette, from papers 
issued in Georgia and Tennessee, and expressed their 
opinions that they ought to be answered by him, as 
they knew they could be most triumphantly. Mr. 
Adams replied : " Should I comply with your request, 
it will be immediately said, I was canvassing for the 
Presidency. I never, that I can recollect, but once, 
undertook to answer anything that was published 
against me, and that was when I was in private life. 
To answer newspaper accusations would be an endless 
task. The tongue of f^ilsehood can never be silenced. 
I have not time to spare from public business to the 
vindication of myself." 

To place Philip P. Barbour, of Virginia, in the 
Speaker's chair, and to prevent the reelection of John 
W. Taylor, of New York, the tried friend of the 
administration, became the next object of all those 
who hoped to rise by opposing it. The partisans of 
Barbour were successful, and the consequences of his 
elevation were immediately apparent. As the Com- 
mittee of Foreign Relations was, by a practical rule, 
the medium of communication between Congress and 
the executive government, it was customary for the 
Speaker to constitute it chiefly of members who coin- 
cided in their views. But many of those now ap- 
pointed by Barbour, especially the chairman, were 
hostile to their politics. To this committee all the 
delicate and critical papers relative to the foreign 



122 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

relations of the United States were to be confiden- 
tially communicated. No arrangement could have 
been more annoying to Mr. Monroe and his cabinet, 
or more symptomatic of a settled opposition. 

By a vote passed in March, 1817, the Senate had 
required of Mr. Adams a report on weights and 
measures ; and in December, 1819, the House of Rep- 
resentatives had by a resolution made the same requi- 
sition. To this subject he had directed his attention 
when in Russia ; and had devoted the leisure his 
duties as Secretary of State permitted, without 
approximating to its completion, owing to the number 
and perplexity of details its pursuit involved. 

In the summer of 1820 he relinquished a visit to 
his father and friends in Massachusetts, and concen- 
trated his attention, during six months, exclusively 
on this report, which he finished and made to Con- 
gress, in February, 1821. At the conclusion of his 
work he thus expresses himself: "This subject has 
occupied, for the last sixty years, many of the ablest 
men in Europe, and to it all the powers, andji a.U 
the philosophical and mathematical learning and inge- 
nuity, of France and Great Britain, have been inces- 
santly directed. It was a fearful and oppressive task. 
It has been executed, and it will be for the public 
judgment to pass upon it." 

From the abstruse character of this work, the labor, 
research, and talent, it evidences have never been gen- 
erally and justly appreciated. It commences with the 
wants of individuals antecedent to the existence of 
communities, and deduces from man's physical organ- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 123 

ization, and from the exigences of domestic society, the 
origin of tneasures of surface, distance, and capacity ; 
and that of weight, from the dilference between the 
specific gravity of substances and its importance in the 
exchange of traffic consequent on the multiplication 
of human wants, with the increase of the social rela- 
tions, lie then proceeds to state and analyze the 
powers and duties of legishitors on the subject, with 
their respective limitations. The results of his re- 
searches relative to the weights and measures of the 
Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, are suc- 
cessively stated. From the institutions of the nations 
of antiquity he derives those of modern Europe and 
of the United States. He praises the "stupendous 
and untiring perseverance of England and France" 
in this field, and explains the causes which have not 
rendered their success adequate to their endeavors. 
The system of modern France on this subject he 
investigates and applauds, as " one of those attempts 
to improve the condition of human kind, which, 
although it may ultimately fail, deserves admiration, 
as approaching more nearly than any other to the 
ideal perfection of uniformity in w^eights and meas- 
ures." After stating the difliculties which prevented 
other nations from seconding the endeavors of France, 
Mr. Adams concludes this elaborate treatise with the 
opinion that universal uniformity on the subject can 
only be effected by a general convention, to which all 
the nations of the world should be parties. Until 
such a general course of measures be adopted, he 
regards it as inexpedient for the United States to 



124 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

make any change in their present system. After an 
ehiborate enumeration of the reguhitions of the sev- 
eral states of the Union, accompanied by voluminous 
documents, he concludes with proposing, " first, to fix 
the standard with the partial uniformity of which it 
is susceptible for the present, excluding all innovation. 
Second, to consult Avith foreign nations for the future 
and ultimate establishment of permanent and universal 
uuiformity." 

The Senate ordered six hundred copies of this report 
to be printed. But its final suggestions were not made 
the subject of action in either branch. A writer of 
the day said, with equal truth and severity, " It was 
not noticed in Congress, where ability was wanting, or 
labor refused, to understand it." As Mr. Adams was 
one of the candidates in the approaching presiden- 
tial election, party spirit was inclined to treat with 
silence and neglect labors which it realized could not 
fail to command admiration and approval. In Eng- 
land the merits of this report were more justly appre- 
ciated. In 1834, Col. Pasley, royal engineer, in a 
learned work on measures and money, acknowledged 
the benefits he had derived from " an official report 
upon weights and measures, published in 1821, by a 
distinguished American statesman, John Quincy Ad- 
ams. This author," he adds, "has thrown more 
light into the history of our old English weights and 
measures than all former writers on the subject ; and 
his views of historical facts, even when occasionally in 
opposition to the reports of our own parliamentary 
committees, appear to me most correct. For my own 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 125 

part, I do not think I could have seen my way into 
the history of English weights and measures in the 
feudal ages without his guidance." 

In the summer of 1821 Mr. Adams was apprized 
that rumors, very unfavorable to his reputation, even 
for integrity, had been industriously circulated in the 
Western country. It had been stated that he had 
made a proposition at Ghent to grant to the British 
the right to navigate the Mississippi, in return for the 
Newfoundland fisheries, and that it was in that section 
represented as a high misdemeanor. Mr. Adams said, 
that a proposition to confirm both those rights as they 
had stood before the war, and as stipulated by the 
treaty of 1783, had been offered to the British commis- 
sioners, not by him, but by the whole American mission, 
every one of whom had subscribed to it. The propo- 
sition was not made by him, but by Mr. Gallatin, who 
knew it would be nothing to the British but a mere 
naked right, of which they could not make any use. 
It was accordingly promptly rejected by the British 
commissioners, and made the ground of a counter 
proposition of renouncing the right they had, under 
the treaty of 1783, of navigating that river, on con- 
dition of our renouncing the old article on the fisheries. 
Mr. Adams at once declared that, if it was acceded to, 
he would never sign the treaty ; and it was promptly 
rejected by the American commissioners. When he 
was again told that he would be accused in the AVest- 
ern States of the proposition to confirm the British rights 
as they stood before the war, he replied, that he had 
no doubt it would be so ; for Mr. Clay had already, in 



126 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

one of his speeches in Congress, represented that this 
proposition had been made by a majority of the Ghent 
commissioners, he being in the minority, without 
acknowledging that he had himsdf signed the note by 
which the offer was made^ and without disclosing how 
lightly the concession was estimated by the British 
commissioners, and how promptly they rejected it. 

Accordingly, on the 18th of April, 1822, John 
Floyd, of Virginia, who, both in that state and in 
Congress, was active in seeking and scattering malign 
imputations concerning the political course of Mr. 
Adams, called, in the House of Representatives, for a 
letter, written by Jonathan Russell, in 1814, to Mr. 
Monroe, then Secretary of State, and, as he stated, 
deposited in that office. 

This call of Floyd was the springing of the mine 
for a long-meditated explosion. On searching the 
records of state, no such letter could be found. Mr. 
Russell immediately volunteered a copy, and deposited 
it in that office. This letter was addressed to James 
Monroe, then Secretary of State, and was dated Paris, 
11th of February, 1815. It was a letter of seven 
folio sheets of paper, and amounted, said Mr. Adams, 
to little less than a denunciation of a majority of the 
Ghent commissioners for proposing the article recog- 
nizing the fishery, and the British right to navigate 
the Mississippi, — a proposition in which Mr. Russell 
had concurred. He wrote this letter at Paris, where 
all the commissioners then were, without ever com- 
municating it to Mr. Adams, or letting him know he 
had any intention of writing such a letter. It was 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. ] 27 

a most elaborate, disingenuous, and sophistical argu 
ment against principles in which Mr. Russell himself 
concurred, and against the joint letters of the 14th 
December, 1814, to which he signed his name. His 
motives, Mr. Adams considered, for writing then to a 
Virginian Secretary of State, under a Virginian Presi- 
dent, were, apparently, at once to recommend himself 
to their sectional prejudices about the Mississippi, and 
to injure him in their esteem and favor, for future effect ; 
and that his motive for now abetting Floyd, in his call 
for these papers as a public document, was to diminish 
the popularity of Mr. Adams in the Western States. 

With these views of the purposes of Floyd and Rus- 
sell, Mr. Adams immediately endeavored to obtain the 
original letter, of wdiich ^h. Russell had now deposited 
in the Secretary of State's office a paper purporting to 
be a copy. The original he ascertained was still in the 
possession of Mr. Monroe, who had received it soon after 
its date ; but, as it was marked "private" by ^Ir. 
Russell, he considered it confidential, and did not place 
it in the office of the Secretary of State. On ascertain- 
ing these facts, Mr. Adams claimed the original letter 
from Mr. Monroe, believing, from internal evidence, 
that the duplicate, instead of being a true copy of the 
original, had been in some respects adapted to present 
effect. iMr. jMonroe declined to listen to the repeated 
remonstrances of jMr. Adams, and continued to main- 
tain that he could not, with honor, make the original 
letter public. lie did not consent until he was called 
upon for it by a vote of the House of Representatives, 
proposed by the friends of Mr. Adams, and resisted by 



128 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Floyd and his pnrty. The original letter being thus 
obtained, Mr. Adams prepared and published a severe 
and scrutinizing examination of its facts and sugges- 
tions, of the motives which prompted those who had 
brought it before the public, and of the discrepancies 
between the original and the alleged copy which Mr. 
Russell had volunteered to place in the office of the 
Secretary of State. Mr. Russell replied through the 
newspapers ; on which reply J\Ir. Adams bestowed a 
searching and caustic analysis, commenting with great 
severity on his language and conduct. 

The whole of this controversy was published imme- 
diately in an octavo pamphlet, including important 
documents relative to the subject and to the transac- 
tions of the commissioners at Ghent, by means of which 
I\Ir. Adams vindicates himself and his colleagues from 
the charges brought against them. This elaborate and 
powerful defence, on which the strength and character 
of his mind are deeply impressed, was regarded as 
triumphant.* 

Mr. Gallatin also published a pamphlet, generally 
corroborative of the statements of Mr. Adams ; an 
example which Mr. Clay, another of the Ghent com- 
/missioners, being at that time a prominent competitor 
with Mr. Adams for the Presidency, did not see fit to 
follow. But, as total silence on his part might be 
construed to his disadvantage, he published in the 
newspapers a letter, dated the 15 th of November, 
1822, in which he intimated that there were some 

* This publication is contained in JViles' Weekly Register, vol. xxii., pp. 
198, 209, 220, 296, 327, and continued in vol. xxiii., pp. 6 and 9. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 120 

errors, both as to matter of fact and opinion, in the 
letter of ]Mr. Adams, as well as in that of Mr. Galla- 
tin ; and declared that he would at some future 
period, more propitious to calm and dispassionate 
consideration, and when there could be no misrepre- 
sentation of motives, lay before the public his own 
narrative of these transactions. 

Mr. Adams, on the 18th of the ensuing December, 
in a communication to the National InteUirjcnccr^ 
expressed the pleasure it would have given him, 
had Mr. Clay thought it advisable to have specified 
the errors he had intimated, to have rectified them 
by acknowledgment. He added, that whenever Mr. 
Clay's accepted time to publish his promised nar- 
rative should come, he would be ready, if liA'ing, to 
acknowledge indicated errors, and vindicate con- 
tested truth. But, lest it might be postponed until 
both should be summoned to account for all their errors 
before a higher tribunal than that of their country, he 
felt called upon to say that what he had written and 
published concerning this controversy w^ould, in every 
particular essential or important to the interest of the 
nation, or to the character of Mr. Clay, be found to 
abide unshaken the test of human scrutiny, of talents, 
and of time. 

In July, 1822, a plan for an independent news- 
paper was proposed to Mr. Adams ])y some members 
of Congress, and the necessity of such a paper was 
urged upon him with great earnestness. He replied : 
"An independent newspaper is very necessary to 
make truth known to the people ; but an editor really 

9 



130 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

independent must have a heart of oak, nerves of 
iron, and a soul of adamant, to carry it through. 
Ilis first attempt will bring a hornet's nest about 
his head ; and, if they do not sting him to death or 
to blindness, he will have to pursue his march with 
them continually swarming over him, and be beset on 
all sides with obloquy and slander." 

In August, 1822, paragraphs from newspapers, 
laudatory of other candidates, and depreciatory of 
Mr. Adams, were shown to him, on which he re- 
marked, " The thing is not new. From the nature of 
our institutions, competitors for public favor and their 
respective partisans seek success by slander of each 
other. I disdain the ignoble w^arfare, and neither 
wage it myself or encourage it in my friends. But, 
from appearances, they will decide the election to the 
Presidency." 

In December, 1822, Alexander Smyth, also a rep- 
resentative of one of the districts of Virginia, fol- 
lowed the example of Mr. Floyd, and, in an address 
to his constituents, took occasion to introduce malign 
imputations upon the political course of Mr. Adams. 
To this end, having ransacked the journals of the 
Senate of the United States at the time when Mr. 
Adams was a member, he undertook to attribute to 
him base motives for the votes he had given, particu- 
larly such as would be likely most to affect his popu- 
larity in Virginia. Mr. Adams immediately caused 
to be printed and published an address to the free- 
holders of Smyth's district ; the nature and spirit of 
which reply will be shown by the following extracts 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 131 

"Friends and Fellow-Citizens: B^'' these titles I presume 
to address you, though personally known to few of you, be- 
cause my character has been arraigned before you by your 
representative in Congress, in a printed handbill, soliciting 
your suffrages for reelection, who seems to have considered 
his first claim to the continuance of your flivor to consist iii 
the bitterness with which he could censure me. I shall never 
solicit your suffrages, nor those of your representatives, for 
anything. But I value your good opinion, and wish to show 
you that I do not deserve to lose it." — " I come to repel the 
charges of General Smyth, but neither for the purpose of 
moving you to withhold your suffrages from him, nor induce 
the General himself to reconsider his opinion concerning me." 
— " As to his opinions, you will permit me to be indifferent to 
the opinions of a man capable of forming his judgment of 
character from such premises as he has alleged in support of 
his estimate of mine." — " His mode of proof is this : lie has 
ransacked the journals of the Senate during the five years I 
had the honor of a seat in that body, — a period the expira- 
tion of which is nearly fifteen years distant, — and wherever 
he has found in the list of yeas and nays my name recorded 
to a vote which he disapproves, he has imputed it, without 
knowing any of the grounds on which it was given, to the 
worst of motives, for the purpose of ascribing them to me. 
Is this fair ? Is this candid ? Is this just ? Where is the 
man who ever served in a legislative capacity'' in your councils 
whose character could stand a test like this ? " 

Mr. Adams then proceeds to reply to all the charges 
brought against him by Alexander Smyth, analyzing 
and explaining every vote which he had made the 
subject of animadversion fully and successfully. The 
close of his defence is as follows : 

" Fellow-Citizens : I have explained to j'ou the reasons 
and real motives of all the votes which your representative. 



132 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

General Alexander Smyth, has laid to ray charge, in a printed 
address to you, and to which unusual publicity has been given 
in the newspapers. I am aware that, in presenting myself 
before you to give this explanation, my conduct may again be 
attributed to unworthy motives. Tlie best actions may be, 
and have been, and will be, traced to impure sources, by those 
to whom troubled waters are a delight. If, in many cases, 
when the characters of public men are canvassed, however 
severely, it is their duty to suffer and be silent, there are 
others, in my belief many others, wherein their duty to their 
country, as well as to themselves and their children, is to stand 
forth the guardians and protectors of their own honest fame. 
Had your representative, in asking again for your votes, con- 
tented himself with declaring to you his intentions concerning 
me, you never would have heard from me in answer to him. 
But when he imputes to me a character and disposition un- 
worthy of any public mau, and adduces in proof mere naked 
votes upon questions of great public interest, all given under 
the solemn sense of duty, impressed by an oath to support the 
constitution, and by the sacred obligations of a public trust, to 
defend myself against charges so groundless and unprovoked 
is, in my judgment, a duty of respect to you, no less than a 
duty of self-vindication to me. I declare to you that not one 
of the votes which General Smyth has culled from an arduous 
service of five years in the Senate of the Union, to stigmatize 
them in the face of the country, was given from any of the 
passions or motives to which he ascribes them ; that I never 
gave a vote either in hostility to the administration of Mr. 
Jefferson, or in disregard to republican principles, or in aver- 
sion to republican patriots, or in favor of the slave-trade, or 
in denial of due protection to commerce. I will add, that, 
having often differed in judgment upon particular measures 
with many of the best and wisest men of this Union of all 
parties, I have never lost sight either of the candor due tc 
them in the estimate of their motives, or of the diffidence 
with which it was my duty to maintain the result of my own 
opinions in opposition to theirs." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 133 

In 1823, as the Presidential election appronched, 
the influences to control and secure the interests pre- 
dominating in the different sections of the country 
became more active. Crawford, of Georgia, Calhoun, 
of South Carolina, Adams, of Massachusetts, and 
Clay, of Kentucky, were the most prominent candi- 
dates. In December, Barbour, of Virginia, was su- 
perseded, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
by Clay, of Kentucky ; an event ominous to the hopes 
of Crawford, and to that resistance to the tariff, and 
to internal improvements, which was regarded as 
dependent on his success. The question whether a 
Congressional caucus, by the instrumentality of which 
Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, had obtained the 
Presidency, should be again held to nominate a can- 
didate for that office, was the next cause of political 
excitement. The Southern party, whose hopes rested 
on the success of Crawford, were clamorous for a 
caucus. The friends of the other candidates were 
either lukewarm or hostile to that expedient. Penn- 
sylvania, whose general policy favored a protective 
tariff and public improvements, hesitated. In 1816 
she had manifested an opposition to that plan of Con- 
gressional influence, and in 1823 a majority of her 
representatives declined attending any partial meet- 
ing of members of Congress that might attempt a 
nomination. But the Democracy of that state, ever 
subservient to the views of the Southern aristocracy, 
held meetings at Philadelphia, and elsewhere, rec- 
ommending a Congressional caucus. This motion 
would have been probably adopted, had not the 



134 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Legislature of Alabama, about this time, nominated 
Andrew Jackson for the Presidency, and accompanied 
their resolutions in his favor with a recommendation to 
their representatives to use their best exertions to pre- 
vent a Congressional nomination of a President. The 
popularity of Jackson, and the obvious importance to 
his success of the policy recommended by Alabama, 
fixed the wavering counsels of Pennsylvania, so that 
only three representatives from that state attended the 
Congressional caucus, which was soon after called, 
and wliich consisted of only sixty members^ out of tivo 
hundred and sixty-one^ the whole number of the House 
of Representatives ; of which Virginia and New 
York, under the lead of Mr. Van Buren, constituted 
nearly one half. Notwithstanding this meagre assem- 
blage, Mr. Crawford was nominated for the Presidency, 
under a confident expectation that the influence of the 
caucus would be conclusive with the people, and the 
candid;. te and policy of Virginia would be confirmed in 
ascendency. But the days of Congressional caucuses 
were now numbered. The people took the nomination 
of President into their own hands, and the insolent 
assumption of members of Congress to dictate their 
choice in respect of this oflice was henceforth re- 
buked. 

While these intrigues were progressing, Mr. Adams 
was zealously and laboriously fulfilling his duties as 
Secretary of State, neither endeavoring himself, nor 
exciting his friends, to counteract these political move- 
ments, one of the chief objects of which was to 
defeat his chance for the Presidency 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 135 

The course of Mr. Adams relative to the applica- 
tion of the Greeks, then struggling for independence, 
for the aid and countenance of the United States, 
next brought him into opposition to the prevailing 
tendency of the popular feeling of the time. A letter 
was addressed to him, as Secretary of State, by An- 
drew Luriottis, envoy of the provisional government 
of the Greeks, at London, entreating that political 
and commercial relations might be established between 
the United States and Greece, and proposing to enter 
upon discussions which might lead to advantageous 
treaties between the two countries. Mv. Rush, the 
American minister in London, enclosed this letter to 
Mr. Adams, and recommended the subject to the 
favorable attention of our government. Mr. Adams, 
after expressing the sympathy of the American ad- 
ministration ill the cause of Greek freedom and inde- 
pendence, and their best wishes for its success, pro- 
ceeded to state that their duties precluded their taking 
part in the war, peace with all the world being the 
settled policy of the United States ; but that if, in 
the progress of events, the Greeks should establish 
and organize an independent government, the United 
States would welcome them, and form with them 
such diplomatic and commercial relations as were suit- 
able to their respective relations. Mr. Adams also 
wrote a letter to Mr. Rush, requesting him to explain 
to Mr. Luriottis that the executive of the United 
States sympathized with the Greek cause, and would 
render the Greeks any service consistent with neu- 
trality ; but that assistance given by the application 



136 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

of the public force or revenue would involve them in 
a war with the Sublime Porte, or perhaps with the 
Barbary powers ; that such aid could not be given 
without an act of Congress, and that the policy of 
the United States was essentially pacific. 

The popular feeling in favor of granting aid to the 
Greeks soon began to be general and intense. Balls 
were held and benefits given to raise funds for their 
relief, and sermons and orations delivered in their 
behalf, in many parts of the United States. " On 
this subject," Mr. Adams remarked, " there are two 
sources of eloquence : the one, with reference to sen- 
timent and enthusiasm ; the other, to action. For the 
Greeks all is enthusiasm. As for action, there is sel- 
dom an agreement, and after discussion the subject is 
apt to be left precisely where it was. Nothing defi- 
nite, nothing practical, is proposed." The United 
States were at peace with the Sublime Porte, and he 
did not think slightly of a war with Turkey. He had 
not much esteem for that enthusiasm for the Greeks 
which evaporated in words. 

In the ensuing session, on the 9th of January, 1824, 
Mr. Webster, in the Senate of the United States, pro- 
posed a resolve " that provision ought to be made by 
law for defraying the expense incident to the appoint- 
ment of an agent or commissioner to Greece, whenever 
the President shall deem it expedient to make such 
appointment ; " supporting it by a speech adapted to 
catch the popular tide, then at the full, and, in fact, 
doing nothing with the appearance of doing something. 
A member of Congress consulted Mr. Adams on an 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 137 

amendment lie proposed to make to the project of INIr. 
Webster, as specified in his resolve, it being then under 
consideration in the House of Representatives. Mr. 
Adams replied, it was immaterial what form the reso- 
lution might assume ; the objection to it would be the 
same in every form. It was, in his opinion, the inter- 
meddling of the legislature with the duties of the 
executive ; it was the adoption of Clay's Sonth Amer- 
ican system ; seizing upon the popular feeling of the 
moment to embarrass the administration. A few days 
afterwards, Mr. Adams took occasion to state his rea- 
sons to Mr. Webster for being averse to his resolution. 
Notwithstanding the Virginia doctrine, that the con- 
stitution does not authorize the application of public 
moneys to internal improvement, was one of the hinges 
on which the selection of candidates in the Southern 
States turned, Mr. Adams did not refrain from openly 
expressing his own opinion. In a letter to a gentle- 
man in Maryland, dated January, 1824, he stated 
that " Congress does possess the power of appropriating 
money for public improvements. Roads and canals 
are among the most essential means of improving the 
condition of nations ; and a people which should delib- 
erately, by the organization of its authorized power, 
deprive itself of the faculty of multiplying its own 
blessings, would be as wise as a Creator who should 



•fe- 



undertake to constitute a human being -without a 
heart."* 

While the election of President was pending, and 
the event uncertain, a member of Congress from Ohio 

* JYiles' Rcirister, vol. xxvi., pp. 251—328. 



y 



138 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

told Mr. Adams there were sanguine hopes of his 
success ; on which he remarked : " We know so lit- 
tle of that in futurity which is best for ourselves, 
that whether I ought to wish for success is among the 
greatest uncertainties of the election. Were it possi- 
ble to look with philosophical indifference to the event, 
that is the temper of mind to which I should aspire. 
But who can hold a firebrand in his hand by thinking 
of the frosty Caucasus? To suffer without feeling is 
not in human nature ; and when I consider that to me 
alone, of all the candidates before the nation, failure 
of success would be equivalent to a vote of censure by 
the nation upon my past services, I cannot dissemble 
to myself that I have more at sttd-^e in the result than 
any other individual. Yet a man qualified for the 
duties of chief magistrate of ten millions of people 
should be a man proof alike to prosperous and adverse 
fortune. If I am able to bear success, I must be tem- 
pered to endure defeat. He who is equal to the task 
of serving a nation as her chief ruler must possess 
resources of a power to serve her, even against her own 
will. This I would impress indelibly on my own 
mind ; and for a practical realization of which, in its 
proper result, I look for wisdom and strength from 
above." 

At the close of the year 1824, Mr. Adams responded 
to a like intimation : " You will be disappointed. To 
me both alternatives are distressing in prospect. The 
most formidable is that of success. All the danger is 
on the pinnacle. The humiliation of fjiilure will be 
so much more than compensated by the safety in which 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 1 S'J 

it will leave me, that I ought to regard it as a con- 
summation devoutly to be wished." 

At this period an apprehension being expressed to 
him that if he was elected Federalists would be 
excluded from ofiice, he said, he should exclude no 
person for political opinion, or on account of personal 
opposition to him ; but that his great object would be 
to break up the remnant of all party distinctions, and 
to bring the whole people together, in point of senti- 
ment, as much as possible ; and that he should turn 
no one out of ofiice on account of his conduct or opin- 
ions in the approaching election. 

The result of this electioneering conflict was, that, 
by the returns of the electoral colleges of the several 
states, it appeared that none of the candidates had the 
requisite constitutional majority ; the whole number 
of votes being two hundred and sixty-one — of which 
Andrew Jackson had ninety-nine, John Quincy Adams 
eighty-four, William H. Crawford forty-one, and Henry 
Clay thirty-seven. For the ofiice of Vice-President, 
John C. Calhoun had one hundred and eighty votes, 
and was elected. 

This result had not been generally anticipated by 
the friends of Mr. Adams. His political course had 
been, for sixteen years, identified with the policy of 
the leading statesmen of the Southern States, and 
had been acceptable to that section of the Union. It 
had therefore been hoped that, with regard to him, 
the general and inherent antipathy to a Northern 
President, which there existed, would have been 
weakened, if not subdued. His diplomatic talents 



140 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

had been successfully exercised in carrying into 
effect Mr. Madison's views during the whole of that 
statesman's administration. He had been the pillar 
on which Mr. Monroe had, during both terms of his 
Presidency, leaned for support, if not for direction. 
It was, therefore, not without reason anticipated that 
at least a partial support would have been given to 
him in the region where the influences of Jefferson, 
Madison, and Monroe, were predominant. But, of the 
ei(jhty-four votes cast for Mr. Adams, not one Avas 
given by either of the three great Southern slavehold- 
ing states. Seventy-seven were given to him by New 
England and New York. The other seven were cast 
by the Middle or recently admitted states. 

The selection of President from the candidates now 
devolved on the House of Representatives, under the 
provisions of the constitution. But, again, Mr. Adams 
had the support of none of those slaveholding states, 
with the exception of Kentucky, and her delegates 
were equally divided between him and General Jack- 
son. The decisive vote was, in effect, in the hands of 
Mr. Clay, then Speaker of the House, wdio cast it for 
Mr. Adams ; * a responsibility he did not hesitate to 
assume, notwithstanding the equal division of the 
Kentucky delegation, aiid jn defiance of a resolution 
passed by the Legislature of that state, declaring their 
preference for General Jackson, f On the final vote 
Andrew Jackson had seven votes, William H. Craw- 
ford four, and John Quincy Adams thirteen ; who 
was, therefore, forthwith declared President of the 

* J\riles' Register, vol. xxvii., p. 387. t Ibid., vol. xxvii., p. 321. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 141 

United States for four years ensuing the 4t]i of March, 
1825. 

In the answer of Mr. Adams to the official notice of 
his election by the House of Representatives, after 
paying tribute to the talents and public services of his 
competitors, he declared that if, by refusal to accept 
the trust thus delegated to him, he could give imme- 
diate opportunity to the people to express, with a 
nearer approach to unanimity, the object of their pref- 
erence, he would not hesitate to decline the moment- 
ous charge. But the constitution having, in case of 
such refusal, otherwise disposed of the resulting con- 
tingency, he declared his acceptance of the trust 
assigned to him by his country through her constitu 
tional organs, confiding in the wisdom of the legisla 
tive councils for his guide, and relying above all on 
the direction of a superintending Providence. 



CHAPTER VII. 

ADMINISTRATION AS PRESIDENT. POLICY. RECOMMENDATIONS TO 

CONGRESS. — PRINCIPLES RELATIVE TO OFFICIAL APPOINTMENTS AND 

REMOVALS, COURSE IN ELECTION CONTESTS. TERMINATION OF HIS 

PRESIDENCY. 

Those sectional, party, and personal influences, 
which at all times tend to throw a republic out of the 
path of duty and safety, were singularly active and 
powerful during the Presidency of Mr. Adams. They 
were peculiar and unavoidable. His administration, 
beyond all others, was assailed by an unprincipled 
and audacious rivalry. Its course and consequences 
belong to the history of the United States, and will 
be here no further stated, or made the subject of com- 
ment, than as they affect or throw light on his policy 
and character. 

Immediately after his inauguration, Mr. Adams 
appointed Henry Clay, of Kentucky, Secretary of 
State ; Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, Secretary of 
the Treasury ; James Barbour, of Virginia, Secretary 
of War ; Samuel L. Southard, of New Jersey, Secretary 
of the Navy; John McLean, of Ohio, Postmaster-Gen- 
eral ; and William Wirt, of Virginia, Attorney-Gen- 
eral. The election of Mr. Adams to the Presidency 

(142) 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 143 

depended on the vote of Henry Clay, who recognized 
and voluntarily assumed the responsibility. By vot- 
ing for General Jackson, he would have coincided 
with the majority of popular voices; but, actuated, as 
he declared, by an irrepressible sense of public duty, 
in open disregard of instructions from the dominant 
party in Kentucky, he dared to expose himself to the 
coming storm, the violence of wdiich he anticipated, and 
soon experienced. In a letter to Mr. F. Brooke, dated 
28th of January, 1825, which was soon published,* 
he thus expressed his views : " As a friend to liberty 
and the permanence of our institutions, I cannot con- 
sent, in this early stage of their existence, by con- 
tributing to the election of a military chieftain, to 
give the strongest guaranty that this republic will 
march in the fatal road which has conducted every 
other republic to ruin." In a letter dated the 2Gth 
of March, 1825, addressed to the people of his Con- 
gressional district, in Kentucky, Mr. Clay more fully 
illustrated the motives for his vote: "I did not 
believe General Jackson so competent to discharge 
the various intricate and complex duties of the office 
of chief magistrate as his competitor. If he has 
exhibited, either in the councils of the Union, or in 
those of his own state or territory, the qualities of a 
statesman, the evidence of the fact has escaped my 
observation." — "It would be as painful as it is 
unnecessary to recapitulate some of the incidents, 
which must be fresh in your recollection, of his public 

* JVY7cs' Weekly Register, vol. xxvii., p. 38G. 



144 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

life , but I was greatly deceived in my judgment if 
they proved him to be endowed with that prudence, 
temper, and discretion, which are necessary for civil 
administration." — " In his elevation, too, I thought I 
perceived the establishment of a fearful precedent." 
— " Undoubtedly there are other and many dangers 
to public liberty, besides that which proceeds from 
military idolatry ; but I have yet to acquire the 
knowledge of it, if there be one more pernicious or 
more frequent. Of Mr. Adams it is but truth and 
justice to say that he is highly gifted, profoundly 
learned, and long and greatly experienced in public 
aifairs, at home and abroad. Intimately conversant 
with the rise and progress of every negotiation with 
foreign powers, pending or concluded ; personally 
acquainted with the capacity and attainments of most 
of the public men of this country whom it might be 
proper to employ in the public service ; extensively 
possessed of much of that valuable kind of informa- 
tion which is to be acquired neither from books nor 
tradition, but which is the fruit of largely participat- 
ing in public affairs ; discreet and sagacious, he will 
enter upon the duties of the ofl&ce with great advan- 
tages." * 

General Jackson was deeply mortified and irritated 
by Mr. Clay's preference of Mr. Adams, and still 
more by his avowal of the motives on which it was 
founded. In a letter to Samuel Swartwout, dated 
the 23d of February, 1825,t by whom it w^as imme- 

* JViles' Weekly Register, vol. xxviii., p. 71. t Ibitl., p. 20. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 145 

diately published, he comphiined bitterly of the term 
" military chieftain," which Mr. Clay, in his letter 
to Mr. Brooke, had applied to him ; and, utterly disre- 
garding the rights and duties which the provisions of 
the constitution had conferred and imposed on Mr. 
Clay, he assumed that he was himself entitled, by 
the plurality of votes he had received, to be regarded 
as the object indicated by " the supremacy of the peo- 
ple's will." Treating the objections as personal, and 
as ominously bearing on his future political prospects, 
after insinuating that there had been " art or man- 
agement to entice a representative in Congress from a 
conscientious responsibility to his own or the wishes of 
his constituents," he declared his intention " to appeal 
from this opprobrium and censure to the judgment of 
an enlightened, patriotic, uncorrupted people." 

Not content with uttering these general insinuations 
against Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams, he immediately 
put into circulation among his friends and partisans 
an unc[ualified statement to the effect that ]\Ir. Adams 
had obtained the Presidency by means of a corrupt 
bargain with Henry Clay, on the condition that he 
should be elevated to the office of Secretary of State. 
To this calumny Jackson gave his name and authority, 
asserting that he possessed evidence of its truth ; and, 
although Mr. Clay and his friends publicly denied the 
charge, and challenged proof of it, two years elapsed 
before they could compel him to produce his evidence. 
This, when adduced, proved utterly groundless, and 
the charge false ; the whole being but the creation of 
an irritated and disappointed mind. Though detected 

10 



146 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

and exposed, the calumny had the effect for which 
it was calcuhited. Jackson's numerous partisans and 
friends made it the source of an uninterrupted stream 
of abuse upon Mr. Adams, through his whole adminis- 
tration. 

The Legislature of Tennessee immediately responded 
to General Jackson's appeal to the people, by nomi- 
nating him as their candidate for the oflice of Presi- 
dent, at the next election ; a distinction Avhich he 
joyfully accepted, and on that account immediately 
resigned his seat in the Senate of the United 
States. 

Thus, before Mr. Adams had made any development 
of his policy as President, an opposition to him and 
his administration was publicly organized by his chief 
competitor, under the authority of one of the states 
of the Union, which manifested itself in party bit- 
terness, and animosit}'' to every act and proposition 
having any bearing on his political prospects. The 
appointment of Henry Clay to the oflice of Secretary 
of State was seized upon as unequivocal proof of 
Jackson's allegation ; yet it was impossible to desig- 
nate any leading politician who had such just, une- 
quivocal, and high pretensions to that station, or one 
more popular, especially at the South and the West. 
Mr. Clay had been a prominent candidate for the 
Presidency in opposition to Mr. Adams. His talents 
were unquestionable, and a long career in public life 
rendered him more conspicuous and suitable for the 
office than any other statesman of the period. These 
qualifications weighed nothing in the scale of pop- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 147 

iilar opinion and prejudice. The strength of oppo- 
sition, based on the calumny circulated by Jackson, 
became apparent on every question which could be 
construed to allect the popularity of Mr. Adams ; 
especially with regard to those measures which Avere 
obviously near his heart, and which tended to give a 
permanent and effective character to his administra- 
tion. 

In his inaugural address, on the 4th of March, 1825,1 

• • 1 

after enumerating the duties of the people and their 

rulers, he proceeded to intimate the views which char- 
acterized his policy : " There remains one effort of 
magnanimity, one sacrifice of prejudice and passion, 
to be made by individuals, throughout the nation, who 
have heretofore followed the standard of political 
party. It is that of discarding every remnant of 
rancor against each other, of embracing as country- 
men and friends, and of yielding to talents and virtue 
alone that confidence which, in times of contention for 
principle, was bestowed only on those who bore the 
badge of party communion." 

His thoughts on this subject were again expressed 
in May, 1825 : " The custom-house officers through- 
out the Union, in all probability, were opposed to my 
election. They are all now in my power ; and I have 
been urged very earnestly, and from various quarters, 
to sweep away my opponents, and provide for my 
friends with their places. I can justify the refusal to 
adopt this policy only by the steadiness and consist- 
ency of my adhesion to my own. If I depart from 
this in any one instance, I shall be called upon by my 



148 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

friends to do the same in many. An invidious and 
inquisitorial scrutiny into the personal disposition of 
public officers will creep through the whole Union, 
and the most sordid and selfish passions will be kin- 
dled into activity, to distort the conduct and misrep- 
resent the feelings of men, whose places may become 
the prize of slander upon them." 

He made but two removals, both from unquestion- 
able causes ; and, in his new appointments, he was 
scrupulous in selecting candidates whose talents were 
adapted to the public service. It was averred, in the 
spirit of complaint or disappointment, that he often 
conferred offices on men who immediately coincided 
with the opponents and became calumniators of his 
administration. He was soon made to realize the 
impracticability of disregarding the old lines of party. 
On being informed, by some of his friends in the 
Southern States, that the objections to the appoint- 
ment of Federalists were insuperable, and would every- 
where affect the popularity of his administration, he 
observed : "On such appointments all the wormwood 
and gall of the old party hatred ooze out. Not a 
vacancy to any office occurs but there is a distin- 
guished Federalist started and pushed home as a can- 
didate to fill it, always well qualified, sometimes in an 
eminent degree, and yet so obnoxious to the Repub- 
lican party, that they cannot be appointed without 
exciting a vehement clamor against him and the admin- 
istration. It becomes thus impossible to fill any 
vacancy in appointment without offending one half 
of the community — the federalists, if their associate 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 14'J 

I3 overlooked ; the Republicans, if he be preferred. 
To this disposition justice must sometimes make resist- 
ance, and policy must often yield." 

The intention of Mr, Adams, avowed and invariably 
pursued, to make integrity and qualification the only 
criterions of appointment to office, — to remove no 
incumbent on account of political hostility, and to 
appoint no one from the sole consideration of political 
adherence, — diminished the power of the administra- 
tion. The most active members of party, who follow 
for reward, either of place or station, were discour- 
aged, and preferred to continue their allegiance to 
those from whom pay was certain, rather than to trans- 
fer it to an administration whose continuance, from 
the well-known influences on which political power in 
this country depends, was dubious, and probably short- 
lived. These consequences w^ere familiar to the mind 
of Mr. Adams ; but his spirit was of a temper which 
chose rather to fall in upholding the constitution of 
his country on its true and pure principles, than to 
become the abettor of corruption, and participator in 
its wages, for the sake of power. The firmness of 
these principles was put to frequent trial during his 
Presidency, but his resolution never wavered. 

The confiding spirit in which he conducted his inter- 
course with his cabinet was thus stated by himself in 
November, 1825: "I have given the draft of my 
annual message to the members of the administration, 
who are to meet and examine it by themselves, and 
then discuss the result with me. I have adopted this 



150 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

mode of scrutinizing the message because I wish to 
have the benefit of every objection that can be made 
by every member of the administration. But it has 
never been practised before, and I am not sure that it 
will be a safe precedent to follow. In England the 
message or speech is delivered by a person under no 
responsibility for its contents ; but here, where he who 
delivers it is alone responsible, and those who advise 
have no responsibility at all, there may be some dan- 
ger in placing the composition of it under the control 
of cabinet members, by giving it up to discussion 
entirely among themselves," 

His first message to Congress contained the follow- 
ing special recommendations: "The maturing into a 
permanent and regular system the application of all 
the superfluous revenues of the Union to internal 
improvement." " The establishment of a uniform 
standard of weights and measures, which had been a 
duty expressly enjoined on Congress by the constitu- 
tion of the United States." "The establishment of 
a naval school of instruction for the formation of sci- 
entific and accomplished ofiicers ; the want of which 
is felt with a daily and increasing aggravation." 
" The establishment of a national university, which 
had been more than once earnestly recommended 
to Congress by Washington, and for which he had 
made express provision in his will." " Connected 
with a university, or separated from it, the erec- 
tion of an astronomical observatory, with provision 
for the support of an astronomer." Every one 
of these recommendations was obviously intimately 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 151 

associated with the progress and character of the 
nation, and independent of all personal or party influ- 
ences. Yet they were treated with utter neglect, or, 
after having been permitted to pass through the forms 
of commitment and report, were suffered to lie unno- 
ticed on the tables of both houses, or to be lost by 
indefinite postponement. 

The firmness of Mr. Adams, and his independence 
of personal considerations, were constantly manifested. 
Thus, in November, 1825, wdien he was urged by 
some of his influential friends to put into his mes- 
sage something soothing to South Carolina^ he replied : 
" South Carolina has put it out of my power. She 
persists in a law* which a judge of the United 
States has declared to be in direct violation of the 
constitution of the United States, and which the Attor- 
ney-General of the United States has also declared to 
be an infringement of the rights of foreign nations ; 
against which the British government has repeatedly 

* In the year 1823 the State of South Carolina passed a law making it the 
duty of the sheritf of any district to apprehend any free negro or person of color, 
brought into that state by any vessel, and contine him in jail until such vessel 
depart, and then to liberate him only on condition of payment of the expenses 
of such detention. To this law William Johnson, a South Carolinian, and a 
judge of the Supreme Court of the United States, in a letter to Mr. Adams, 
then Secretary of State, called the attention of the President of the United 
States, as a violation of the constitution ; and declared his belief " that it had 
been passed as much for the pleasure of bringing the functionaries of the United 
States into contempt, by exposing their impotence, as from any other cause 
whatsoever ; " they being precluded from resorting to the writ of habeas cor- 
pus and injunction because the cases assume<I the form of state prosecutions. 
Uilliam Wirt, also, the Attorney-General of the United States, in a letter to 
Mr. Adams, then Secretary of State, pronounced that law " as being against 
the constitution, treaties, and laws, and incompatible with the rights of &V 
nations in amity with the United States." 



152 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

remonstrated, and upon which we have promised them 
that the cause of complaint shoukl be removed; — a 
promise which the obstinate adherence of the govern- 
ment of South Carolina to their law has disenabled 
us from fulfilling. The Governor of South Carolina 
has not even answered the letter from the Department 
of State, transmitting to them the complaint of the 
British government against this law. In this state 
of things, for me to say anything gratifying to the 
feelings of the South Carolinians on this subject, 
would be to abandon the ground taken by the admin- 
istration of Mr. Monroe, and disable us from taking 
hereafter measures concerning the law, which we may 
be compelled to take. To be silent is not to interfere 
with any state rights, and renounces no right of our- 
selves or others." 

The same trait of character is evidenced by his 
persisting in recommending the application of the 
superfluous revenue to internal improvements, notwith- 
standing he well knew its unpopularity in Virginia, 
where it was denounced as realizing the prophecy of 
Patrick Henry, that " the Federal government would 
be a magnificent government." After delivering his 
first message, he was told, by a leading and influential 
member of Congress from Virginia, that " excitement 
against the general government was great and univer- 
sal in that state ; that opinions there had been before 
divided, but that now the whole state would move in 
one solid column." And the same member read to him 
letters from Jefferson and Madison, denouncing the 
doctrines of the message in the most emphatic terms. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 153 

A letter from distinguished friends of De Witt 
Clinton, stating that his adherents predominated in 
the Legislature of New York, and recommending a 
course to conciliate their influence, was shown to Mr. 
Adams in 182G. On this suggestion he remarked : 
"A conciliatory course, so far as may be compatible 
with self-respect, is proper and necessary towards all ; 
but, in the protracted agony of character and reputa- 
tion which it is the will of a superior power I should 
pass through, it is my duty to link myself to the for- 
tunes of no man. In the balance of politics it is 
seldom wise to make one scale preponderate by weights 
taken from another. Neutrality towards parties is the 
proper policy of a President in office." 

When oflicially informed that a senator from Georgia 
threatened that, unless the lands of the Creek Indians, 
claimed by that state as within its boundaries, were 
ceded, her weight would be thrown for General Jack- 
son, Mr. Adams replied, " that we ought not to yield 
to Georgia, because we could not do so without gross 
injustice ; and that, as to her being driven to support 
General Jackson, he felt little care about that. He 
had no more confidence in the one party than the 
other." 

A similar reply was made to an influential New 
York politician, who told him that the friends of De 
Witt Clinton would probably support the administra- 
tion, but that Van Buren and his bucktails would be 
inveterate in their opposition. "I consider it," said 
he, "a lottery-ticket whether either of those parties 
would support the administration." 



154 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

The opposition to the election, and subsequently to 
the administration of Mr. Adams, in the South, had 
its origin and support, as we have seen, first, in the 
fact that he was (with the exception of his father) the 
only President who had not been a slaveholder ; and, 
next, in the fixed determination, in that section of the 
Union, to keep the Presidency, if possible, in the hands 
of an individual belonging to that class. If, from cir- 
cumstances, this should be no longer practicable, then 
their policy would be to select a candidate who had no 
sympathy for the slave, and whose subserviency to the 
supremacy of Southern interests was unquestionable. 
The attempt to extinguish slavery in Missouri, although 
it had resulted in wdiat was called the Missouri com- 
promise, had created towards all who were not slave- 
holders a feverish jealousy in the South, which de- 
scended on Mr. Adams with double violence because 
his free spirit was known. This was not diminished 
by the f^xct that he had, neither in act nor language, 
ever transcended the provisions of the constitution, 
but had, in every instance, fully recognized its obli- 
gations. 

In February, 1826, two resolutions, which had 
been adopted in executive session, were brought to 
Mr. Adams. The first declared " that the expediency 
of the Panama mission ought to be debated in Sen- 
ate with open doors, unless the publication of the 
documents, to which it would be necessary to refer in 
debate, would prejudice existing negotiations. The 
second was a respectful request to the President of the 
United States to inform the Senate whether such 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 155 

objection exists to the publication of all or any part 
of those documents ; and, if so, to specify to what 
part it applies." 

" These resolutions," said Mr. Adams, " are the 
fruit of the ingenuity of Martin Van Buren, and bear 
the impress of his character. The resolution to debate 
an executive nomination with open doors is without 
example ; and the thirty-sixth rule of the Senate is 
explicit and unqualified, that all documents communi- 
cated in confidence by the President to the Senate 
shall be kept secret by the members. The request to 
me to specify the particular documents the publication 
of which w^ould affect negotiations was delicate and 
ensnaring. The limitation was not of papers the pub- 
lication of which might be injurious, but merely of 
such as w^ould affect existing negotiations ; and, this 
being necessarily a matter of opinion, if I should 
specify passages in the document as of such a charac- 
ter, any senator might make it a question for discus- 
sion in the Senate, and they might finally publish the 
whole, under color of entertaining an opinion different 
from mine upon the probable effect of the publication. 
Besides, shouhl the precedent once be established of 
opening the doors of the Senate in the midst of a 
debate upon executive business, there would be no 
prospect of ever keeping them shut again. I answered 
the resolution of the Senate by a message stating that 
all the communications I had made on this subject had 
been confidential ; and that, believing it important to 
the public interest that the confidence between the 
Executive and the Senate should continue unimpaired, 



loG MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

I should leave to tliemselves the determination of a 
question, upon the motives of which, not being in- 
formed, I was not competent to decide." 

When the intrigues which embarrassed and dis- 
turbed the Presidency of Mr. Adams were in full 
vigor, his spirit and strength of character were conspic- 
uously manifested. In April, 1827, whilst the state 
elections were pending, letters were shown to him 
complaining that the administration did not support 
its friends, and intimating that time and money must 
be sacrificed to his success. Mr. Adams remarked : 
" I have observed the tendency of our elections to 
venality, and shall not encourage it. There is much 
money expended by the adversaries of the administra- 
tion, and it runs chiefly in the channels of the press. 
They work by slander to vitiate the public spirit, and 
pay for defamation, to receive their reward in votes." 

At the beginning of the third year of his term of 
office the currents of party began to ran strongly 
towards the approaching struggle for the Presidency. 
Mr. Adams, writing concerning the aspects of the 
time, remarked . " General politics and electioneering 
topics appear to be the only material of interest and 
of discourse to men in the public service. There are 
in several states, at this time, and Maryland is one of 
them, meetings and counter meetings, committees of 
correspondence, delegations, and addresses, for and 
ngainst the administration ; and thousands of persons 
are occupied with little else than to work up the pas- 
sions of the people preparatory to the presidential 
election, still more than eighteen months distant." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 157 

Complaints were constantly made that the adminis- 
tration neglected its friends, and gave oifices to its 
enemies. Applications for appointments, especially 
for clerkships, in the departments, were continual, 
and were often made to Mr. Adams himself. He 
always refused to interfere directly, or by influence, 
unless his opinion was sought by the heads of the 
departments themselves, saying that to them the selec- 
tion and responsibility properly belonged. " One of 
the heaviest burdens of my station," he observed, "is 
to hear applications for office, often urged, accompa- 
nied with the cry of distress, almost every day in the 
year, sometimes several times in the day, and having 
it scarcely ever in my power to administer the desired 
relief." 

In May, 1827, Mr. Adams wrote to a friend : " Mr. 
Van Buren paid me a visit this morning. He is on 
his return from a tour through Virginia, North and 
South Carolina, and Georgia, with C. C. Cambreling, 
since the close of the last session of Congress. They 
are generally understood to be electioneering ; and 
Van Buren is now the great manager for Jackson, 
as he was, before the last election, for jMr. Crawford. 
He is now acting over the part in the Union which 
Aaron Burr performed in 1799. Van Buren, how- 
ever, has improved, in the art of electioneering, upon 
Burr, as the State of New York has grown in relative 
strength and importance in the Union. Van Buren 
has now every prospect of success in his present move- 
ments, and he will avoid the rock on which Burr after- 
wards split." These general conclusions, formed on 



158 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

observation and knowledge of character, projects, and 
movements, time has proved to be just. At this day 
there can be no doubt that, during a tour through the 
Southern section of the Union, in April and May, 1827, 
by Van Buren and Cambreling, one a senator, the other 
a representative in Congress from New York, an alli- 
ance was formed between the former and Jackson, 
having for its object to supersede Mr. Adams and to 
elevate themselves in succession to the Presidency. 
The result is illustrative of the means and the arts 
by which ambition shapes the destinies of republics, 
by pampering the passions and prejudices of the mul- 
titude, by casting malign suggestions on laborious 
merit, effective talent, and faithful services. 

In June, 1827, some of the friends of Mr. Adams 
urged him to attend the celebration at the opening of 
the Pennsylvania Canal, to meet the German farm- 
ers, and speak to them in their own language. He 
replied : " I am highly obliged to my friends for their 
good opinion ; but this mode of electioneering is suited 
neither to my taste nor my principles. I think it 
equally unsuitable to my personal character, and to the 
station in which I am placed." 

As the year drew towards the close. Van Buren, 
who had increased his influence by union with De 
Witt Clinton, triumphed throughout the State of New 
York. "The consequences," said Mr. Adams, "are 
decisive on the next presidential election ; but the 
principles on which my administration has been con- 
ducted cannot be overthrown. A session of Congress 
of unexampled violence and fury is anticipated by its 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 159 

friends. My own mind is made up for it. I have 
only to ask that as my day is so may my strength be." 

A letter from Thomas Mann Randolph, on the opin- 
ions of Mr, Jefferson relative to the last presiden- 
tial eleetion, which had been recently published in 
Ohio, w^as at this time shown to Mr. Adams, and it 
was proposed to him to publish a letter to his father , 
from Mr. JelTerson, on that subject ; which he declined, 
saying: "The letter is not here, but if it were I 
would not publish it. I possess it only as executor 
to my father ; and, it having been confidential, the 
executors of Mr. Jefferson have undoubtedly a copy 
of it, and, as depositaries of his confidence, are the 
only persons wdio can, w^ith propriety, authorize its 
publication." lie added: "The divulging private 
and confidential letters is one of the worst features 
of electioneering practised among us. Though often 
tempted and provoked to it, I have constantly refrained 
from it." 

At this period Mr. Rush read to Mr. Adams his 
report on the finances, in which he largely discussed 
the policy of encouraging and protecting domestic 
manufactures. " It will, of course," said Mr. Adams, 
" be roughly handled in Congress and out of it; but 
the policy it recommends will outlive the blast of 
faction, and abide the test of time." 

At the opening of the Twentieth Congress, in 
December, 1827, the election of Andrew Stevenson, 
of Virginia, a man decidedly hostile to the adminis- 
tration, as Speaker of the House of Representatives, 
manifested that the opposition had now gained a 



IGU MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

majority in both houses of Congress ; a state of affairs 
which had never before occurred under the govern- 
ment of the United States. 

Mr. Adams, being informed that it was Mr. Chiy's 
intention to issue another pamphlet in refutation of 
the charge of bargaining and corruption, which Gen- 
eral Jackson and his partisans under his authority 
had brought against them both, remarked: "They 
have been already amply refuted ; but, in the excite- 
ment of contested elections, and of party spirit, 
judgment becomes the slave of the will. jMen of 
intelligence, talent, and even of integrity upon other 
occasions, surrender themselves to their passions, be- 
lieve anything, with and without, and even against 
evidence, according as it suits their own wishes." 

Mr. Clay and his friends were not disposed to permit 
a calumny so opprobrious to pass without disproof; yet 
during two years they could only oppose to it a gen- 
eral denial ; but, in March, 1827, a letter from Mr. 
Carter Beverly, a friend of General Jackson, came into 
their possession, by which it appeared that Jackson, 
before a large company, in Beverly's presence, had 
declared that, " concerning the election of Mr. Adams 
to the Presidency, Mr. Clay's friends made a proposi- 
tion to his friends, that if they would promise for Mm 
not to put Mr. Adams into the seat of Secretary of 
State, Mr. Clay and his friends would in one hour 
make him the President;"* — a proposition which, 
Jackson said, he indignantly rejected. No sooner waa 

* JSfiles^ Weekly Register, vol. xxxii., p. 162. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. IGl 

this statement made known to Mv. Clay, than he pro- 
nounced it " a gross fabrication, of a cahiiiinious char- 
acter, put forth for the double purpose of injuring his 
public character and propping up the cause of General 
Jackson ; and that, for himself and his friends, he 
defied the substantiation of the charge before any fair 
tribunal whatever." This compelled General Jackson, 
in self-defence, to come before the public ; and in a 
letter to Carter BcA'crly, dated the 5th of June, 1827, 
he made specific charges against Mr. Clay and Mr. 
Adams. He stated that early in January, 1825, a 
member of Congress, of high respectability, informed 
him that there was a great intrigue going on, which 
it was right he should know ; that the friends of Mr. 
Adams had made overtures to the friends of Mr. Clay, 
that if they would unite in the election of Mr. Adams, 
Mr. Clay should be Secretary of State ; that the 
friends of jMr. Adams were urging, as a reason to 
induce the friends of Mr. Clay to accede to their prop- 
osition, that if he (Gen. Jackson) was elected Presi- 
dent, Mr. Adams would bo continued Secretary of 
State [Innuendo, there would be no room for Ken- 
tucky] ; that the friends of Mr. Clay stated, that the 
West did not wish to separate from the West, and 
if he w^ould say, or permit any of his confidential 
friends to say, that, in case he was elected Presi- 
dent, Mr. Adams should not be continued Secretary 
of State, by a complete union of Mr. Clay and his 
friends they would put an end to the presidential con- 
test in one hour ; and that this respectable member of 

Congress declared that he ivas of opinion it was right 

11 



162 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

to fight such intriguers with their own weapons. To 
which General Jackson replied, that he would never 
step into the presidential chair by such means of 
bargain and corruption ; and added, that the second 
day after this communication and reply, it was 
announced in the newspapers that Mr. Cbiy had come 
out openly and avowedly in favor of Mr. Adams.* 

To this accusation Mr. Clay, in a letter to the pub- 
lic, dated the 4th of July, 1827, made '' a direct, 
unqualified, and indignant denial," and called on 
General Jackson ' ' to substantiate his charges by sat- 
isfactory evidence." General Jackson immediately 
gave to the public the name of James Buchanan, of 
Pennsylvania, as " the respectable member of Con- 
gress " who made to him this communication and 
proposition. This declaration compelled Mr. Buchanan 
to come before the public ; who accordingly, in a let- 
ter dated the 8th of August, 1827,t published to the 
world what he declared to be "/Ac only conversation 
which he ever held with General Jackson^'' in which he 
stated to him that, having heard a rumor that he in- 
tended, in case of his election, to appoint Mr. Adams 
Secretary of State, and thinking such an appointment 
would "cool the ardor of his friends," he called on him, 
and informed him of the rumor, and asked him whether 
he had ever intimated such intention ; that Jackson 
replied he had not, and that, if elected President, he 
would enter upon the office untrammelled ; and that 
this was substantially the whole conversation. Mr. 

* Jfiles^ Weekly Register, vol. xxxii., p. 816. t Ibid., p. 415. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 1G3 

Buchanan added, that he did not call upon General 
Jackson as the agent of Mr. Clay, or his friends, which 
he was not ; and that he was incapahle of entertaining 
the opinion Jackson had charged him with, that " it 
was right to fight such intriguers with their own weap- 
ons ;" and that he thought that Jackson " could not 
have received this impression until after Mr. Clay and 
his friends had actually elected Mr. Adams President, 
and Mr. Adams had appointed Mr. Clay Secretary of 
State." 

A more fu-ll, direct, and conclusive contradiction 
of every fact asserted by General Jackson is impos- 
sible. Yet it had no effect upon his prospects or 
policy. His partisans continued to propngate the 
calumny, and profess their belief in it ; and he gave 
encouragement to this course by maintaining a scru- 
pulous silence on Mr. Buchanan's contradiction, Mr. 
Clay, speaking on this point, observed: " After Mr. 
Buchanan's statement appeared, there were many per- 
sons who believed that General Jackson's magnanimity 
would immediately prompt him to retract his charge. 
I did not participate in that just expectation, and 
therefore felt no disappointment that it was not real- 
ized."* 

The calumny had done its work. It had been, for 
more than two years, cankering the public mind. Gen- 
eral Jackson realized that it was an efficient means of 
victory, and was not disposed to diminish its power. 
His partisans, as Mr. Adams anticipated, had " sur 

* JViles' Register, vol. xxxiii., p. 297. 



V 



164 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

rendered themselves to their passions, and believed, 
without evidence and against evidence, as suited their 
own wishes." 

The inveteracy of opposition to the administration of 
Mr. Adams was systematic, violent, and unprincipled. 
Party spirit determined that it should be prostrated. 
It was stated publicly that " a highly-respected mem- 
ber of Congress, of General Jackson's party, had 
declared that it was to be put down though it be as 
pure as the angels which stand at the right hand of 
the throne of God." No respect was paid, no regard 
had, for either fiithful services or acknowledged integ- 
rity. An administration conducted on the most ele- 
, vated and consistent principles, as far above party and 
selfish motives as it is possible for human beings to 
attain, was destined to be sacrificed. General Jack- 
son entered upon his civil career in the spirit of a 
military chieftain. He knew well how to collect 
round his standard those intriguers in the free states 
who were content to adopt his badge, and ride into 
power in his train. Of the slave states he was sure, 
from both affinity and policy. 

Mr. Clay, in his address to the public in December, 
1827, thus represents the spirit of General Jackson's 
party at that period:* "The rancor of party spirit 
spares nothing. It penetrates and pervades every- 
where. It does not scruple to violate the sanctity of 
social and private intercourse. It substitutes for facts 
dark surmises and malevolent insinuations. It mis- 



' jYiles' Rei/ister, vol. xxxiii., p. 303. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 1G5 

represents, and holds up in false and insidious lights, 
incidents perfectly harmless in themselves, of ordinary 
occurrence, or of mere common civility." 

During these agitations Mr. Adams was diligently 
watching over the great interests of the country, and 
assiduously fulfilling the duties of his station, and no 
further interesting himself in the struggles of party 
than when compelled to notice them by their virulence, 
or by the earnestness of political friends. A member 
of the Senate having asked him how the interdiction 
of commerce by our vessels with the British colonies 
could be counteracted, "My opinion is," he replied, 
" that there should be an act of Congress totally inter- 
dicting the trade with all her colonies, both in the 
West Indies and North America ; but the same act 
should provide for reopening the trade, upon terms of 
reciprocity, whenever Great Britain should be disposed 
to assent to them." 

Early in 1828 Mr. Adams was informed that the 
question of Free-masonry w^as the conclusive criterion 
on which the elections in the western parts of the State 
of New York would turn ; and that it was industri- 
ously circulated that he was a Free-mason. If the 
assertion w^s denied, offers had been made to produce 
extracts from the books of the lodge to which he 
belonged. lie was, therefore, requested publicly to 
deny being a Mason. lie replied, that he was not, and 
never had been, a Free-mason ; but that, if he should 
publicly deny it, he would not be surprised if a forged 
extract from some imaginary lodge should be produced 



166 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

to counteract his statement. Such are the morals of 
electioneering ! 

On the subject of the Indians in the State of 
Georgia Mr. Adams said: "Our engagements with 
them and among ourselves, in relation to the lands 
lying within that state, are inconsistent. We have 
contracted with the State of Georgia to extinguish the 
title to the Indian lands lying within that state, and 
at the same time have stipulated with the Creeks and 
Cherokees that they should hold their lands forever. 
"VVe have talked about benevolence and humanity, and 
preached them into civilization ; but none of this 
benevolence is felt when the rights of the Indians 
come into collision with the interests of the white man. 
The Cherokees have now been making a written con- 
stitution ; but this imperium in imperio is impracti- 
cable ; and, in the instance of the New York Indians 
removed to Green Bay, and of the Cherokees removed 
to the Territory of Arkansas, we have scarce given 
them time to build their wigwams before we are called 
upon by our own people to drive them out again. My 
own opinion is that the most benevolent course towards 
them would be to give them the rights and subject 
them to the duties of citizens, as a part of our o^^^l 
people. But even this the people of the states within 
which they are situated would not permit." 

In January, 1828, Mr. Adams received a letter 
from his friends in Pennsylvania, proposing a subscrip- 
tion for the purchase and setting up a German news- 
paper in support of the administration, and inquir- 
ing if he would permit his son, John Adams, id 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 1G7 

contribute to that object. He replied that, on full 
consideration of the transaction, he deemed it his duty 
to decline ; that how far the employment of money 
to promote the success of the election might be proper 
in others, it was not for him to determine ; he could 
only lament the necessity, if it existed ; but to apply 
money himself for the promotion of his own election 
he thought incorrect in principle, and had invariably 
avoided it. He knew that others were less scrupu- 
lous, and that it had been done by one individual to 
the pecuniary embarrassment of his whole life. He 
had been solicited to adopt a like course, but had uni- 
formly declined, not from pecuniary considerations, 
but because he could not approve of the thing. 

In January, 1828, Mr. Floyd, of Virginia, who 
had taken upon himself the inglorious office of hunt- 
ing up and disseminating malign aspersions against 
President Adams, brought before the House of 
Representatives statements concerning his accounts, 
which had been long before settled at the treasury 
of the United States ; and, after recapitulating 
the number of the public offices he had held, and 
swelling to the utmost the -amount he had received 
out of the public treasury, terminated his censorious 
attack with the mean sneer that he did not com- 
plain, since every man should make his own living, 
if he can. To this, Mr. Everett, of Massachusetts, 
replied, with truth and dignity, that whatever Mr. 
Adams had received, be it great or small, was sanc- 
tioned by other administrations, with which Mr. Adams 
had nothing to do, either in establishing the office 



108 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

fixing the compensations, or seeking the employment 
For a third of a century passed in the service of 
his country, neither he, nor his friends for him, 
with his knowledge nor without his knowledge, ever 
solicited any public office or employment ; and that, 
taking into consideration the number of years passed 
by him in the public service, and the variety and 
importance of the missions with which he had been 
intrusted in whole or in part, no foreign minister had 
ever received less than Mr. Adams, while many have 
received more. These statements he supported by 
many minute, accurate, and unanswerable details. 
In a like spirit Mr. Sargent, of Philadelphia, repro- 
bated and refuted the calumnies uttered against the 
administration relative to these accounts. 

In January, 1828, Mr. Chilton, of Kentucky, intro- 
duced a resolution into the House of Representatives, 
declaring the necessity of retrenchments, to save money 
and pay off the national debt ; and proposing reduc- 
tions not only in executive contingencies, but also in 
those of the two houses. This movement disconcerted 
the party to which Mr. Chilton belonged. They were 
^disposed to point the battery against the administra- 
tion, but charges of abusive applications of the public 
moneys by the past as well as the present administra- 
tion, and both houses of Congress, did not suit party 
purposes, Randolph, of Virginia, Ingham, of Penn- 
sylvania, and McDuffie, of South Carolina, accordingly 
strove, by amendments, to narrow down the discussion 
so as to make it bear upon Mr. Adams or Mr. Clay, 
and to give countenance to every slander with which 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. IGO 

the newspapers were teeming against them, but dep- 
recating all general investigations. 

Being repeatedly asked concerning his rule of con- 
duct relative to appointments to office, Mr. Adams 
answered : " My system has been, and continues to 
be, to nominate for reappointment all officers, for a 
term of years, whose commissions expire, unless offi- 
cial or moral misconduct is charged and substantiated 
against them. This does not suit the Falstaff friends 
' who follow for the reward ; ' and I am importuned to 
serve my friends, and reproached for neglecting them, 
because I will not dismiss, or drop from executive 
favor, officers faithful and able, because they are my 
political opponents, to provide for my own partisans. 
This I will not do." 

In February, 1828, Mr. Wright, of Ohio, de- 
fended Mr. Adams and his administration, on the 
subject of his votes in the Senate on the acquisition of 
Louisiana, on the Mississippi and fishery question at 
Ghent, on an expression in his message to Congress 
in December, 1825, and other charges and falsehoods 
which the friends of General Jackson were publishing 
against him in newspapers, handbills, and stump 
speeches, throughout the Union. 

Mr. Adams was earnestly entreated by his friends 
to reply to a pamphlet by Samuel D. Ingham, of 
which many thousands had been franked by members 
of Congress to their constituents. He refused to 
do it, saying, " The slanders and falsehoods of that 
pamphlet have already been abundantly refuted in the 



170 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

speeches of Jonathan Roberts, Edward Everett, and 
John C. Wright." 

In the committee on retrenchments, Mr. Wickliffe 
and Mr. Ingham were extremely busy in search of 
charges against the administration, and asserted that 
there was a hirge item of secret services, vouched only 
by the certificate of Mr. Adams. A member of Con- 
gress informed him of their proceedings, and asked, if 
there should be any clamorers on that subject, whether 
he would have any objection to make a communication 
with regard to it. Mr. Adams replied : " Certainly. 
The secret was enjoined on me by the constitution and 
the law, and I shall not divulge it. It might be 
alleged as probable ■ — and such was the fact — that, 
although the accounts had been but lately settled, 
the expenditures had been incurred and the pay- 
ment authorized by the direction of the late President 
Monroe." 

As the electioneering struggle was progressing, Mr. 
Adams, being asked to -advance money in aid of his 
own election, replied : " The Presidency of the United 
States is not an office to be either sought or declined. 
To pay money for securing it is, in my opinion, incor- 
rect in principle. The practices of all parties are 
tending to render elections altogether venal, and I 
am not disposed to countenance them." 

On the subject of personal interviews with the 
President, he thus expressed himself: " I have never 
denied access to me as President to any one, of 
any color ; and, in my opinion of the duties of that 
office, it never ought to be denied. Place-hunters 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 171 

are not pleasant visitors, or correspondents, and they 
consume an enormous disproportion of time. To this 
personal importunity the President ought not to be 
subjected ; but it is, perhaps, not possible to relieve 
him from it, without excluding him from interviews 
with the people more, perhaps, than comports with 
the nature of our institutions." 

In Kentucky the Senate of the state constituted 
itself into an inquisition on a charge against Mr. 
Adams of corruption, sent for persons and papers, and 
invited ex parte depositions and garbled statements, 
where the parties inculpated had no opportunity of 
being heard, and where the testimony given and the 
testimony suppressed were alike adapted to promote 
groundless slanders. 

In South Carolina movements were made towards 
civil war and the dissolution of the Union, for the 
purpose of carrying the election by intimidation, or, 
if they should fail in that, of laying the foundation 
of a future forcible resistance, to break down or over- 
awe the administration after the event. 

Evidences of the vehement party war stimulated 
and personally waged by General Jackson against Mr. 
Adams might be easily multiplied ; but enough has 
been stated to vindicate the character of his adminis- 
tration and the judgment of Henry Clay. By daring 
to exercise his constitutional rights, by taking the 
responsibility of preferring Mr. Adams to General 
Jackson, Mr. Clay postponed for four years an admin- 
istration characteristic of its leader, violent, intriguing, 
headstrong, and corrupt. After the passions and inter- 



172 MEMOIR, OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

ests of the present day have passed away, his vote on 
that occasion will be regarded by posterity as his 
choicest and purest title to their remembrance. 

To aid the adversaries of Mr. Adams, and to awaken 
against him in the Northern States, where his strength 
lay, the dormant passions of former times, the name 
and influence of Mr. Jefferson were brought into the 
field. In December, 1825, a letter had been drawn 
from him, by William B. Giles, a devoted partisan of 
Jackson, and given to the public with appropriate 
commentaries and asperities. In this letter Mr. Jef- 
ferson, after acknowledging that " his memory was so 
broken, or gone, as to be almost a blank," undertook 
to relate a conversation he had with Mr. Adams 
in 1808, and connected it with facts with which it 
had no relation, and which occurred several years 
afterwards, while Mr. Adams was in Europe. These 
mistakes, in the opinion of Mr. Adams, required 
explanations. He, therefore, gave a full statement 
of the facts, so far as he was concerned, and of the 
communications he had made in 1808 to Mr. Jeffer- 
son. These explanations had the tendency which 
Mr. Giles and the authors of the scheme intended ; 
but the controversies which ensued are not within the 
scope of this memoir. Feelings and passions, which 
had slept for almost twenty years, were awakened. 
Correspondences ensued, in which the policy and events 
of a former period were discussed with earnestness and 
warmth. But the ultimate object, for which the 
broken and incoherent recollections of Mr. Jefferson's 
old age were brought before the public, was not 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUK^CY ADAMS. 173 

attained. Those who dilTorcd from the opinions of 
Mr. Adams, and had condemned his political course 
in former times, although their sentiments remained 
unchanged, were satisfied with the principles and 
ability he evinced in his present high station, and 
indicated no inclination to aid the projects of his oppo- 
nents. The embers of former animosity were indeed 
uncovered, but in the Eastern States, where the friends 
of Mr. Adams were most numerous, no disposition 
was evinced to favor the elevation of General Jackson 
to the Presidency. 

In other sections of the Union a combination of 
influences tended to defeat the reelection of Mr. Adams. 
In Virginia William B. Giles engaged in giving pub- 
licity to violent and inflammatory papers against 
his administration ; Thomas II. Benton, of Missouri, 
strenuously endeavored to destroy his popularity in 
the West ; while Martin Van Buren, the leader of 
the party which then controlled New York, also 
devoted his efforts to secure Jackson's ascendency. 

When Mr. Adams was informed that Mr. Clay's 
final and full vindication of liimself against the 
aspersions of General Jackson had appeared from the 
press, he said: "It is unnecessary. Enough has 
already been said to put down that infamous slander, 
wdiich has been more than once publicly branded as 
falsehood. The conspiracy will, however, probably 
succeed. When suspicions have been kindled into 
popular delusion, truth, reason, and justice, speak to 
the ears of adders. The sacrifice must be consum- 
mated. There will then be a reaction in public 



174 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

opinion. It may not be rapid, but it will be cer- 
tain." 

By one of those party arrangements which ever 
have shaped, and to human view forever will decide, 
the destinies of this republic, — a coalition being 
effected between the leading influences of the slave 
states and those of New York and Pennsylvania, — 
Andrew Jackson and John C. Calhoun, both slave- 
holders, were respectively elected President and Vice- 
President of the United States. 



CHAPTER VIII. 



PCRSUITS OF MR. ADAMS IN EETIREMENT. — ELECTED TO CONGRESS. 

PARTIES AND THEIR PROCEEDINGS. HIS COURSE IN RESPECT OP 

THEM. HIS OWN ADMINISTRATION AND THAT OF HIS SUCCESSOR 

COMPARED. — REPORT ON MANUFACTURES AND THE BANK OF TUB 
UNITED STATES. REFUSAL TO VOTE, AND CONSEQUENT PROCEED- 
INGS. SPEECH AND REPORT ON THE MODIFICATION OF THE TARIFF 

AND SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION. 



On the 4th of March, 1829, Andrew Jackson was 
inaugurated President of the United States, and Mr. 
Adams retired, as he then thought forever, from public 
life. His active, energetic spirit required neither 
indulgence nor rest, and he immediately directed his 
attention to those philosophical, literary, and religious 
researches, in which he took unceasing delight. The 
works of Cicero became the object of study, analysis, 
and criticism. Commentaries on that master-mind of 
antiquity were among his daily labors. The transla- 
tion of the Psalms of David into English verse was a 
frequent exercise ; and his study of the Scriptures was 
accompanied by critical remarks, pursued in the spirit. 
of free inquiry, chastened by a solemn reference to 
their origin, and influence on the conduct and hopes 
of human life. His favorite science, astronomy, led to 
the frequent observation of the planets and' stars ; and 

(175) 



176 MEMOIR OF* JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

his attention was also turned to agriculture and hor- 
ticulture. He collected and planted the seeds of forest 
trees, and kept a record of their development, and, in 
the summer season, labored two or three hours daily 
in his garden. With these pursuits were combined 
sketches preparatory to a full biography of his father, 
which he then contemplated as one of his chief future 
employments. 

From the subjects to which the labors of his life 
had been principally devoted his thoughts could not 
be wholly withdrawn. As early as the 2Tth of 
April, 1829, a citizen of Washington spoke to him 
with great severity on the condition of public affairs, 
and of the scandals in circulation concerning them ; 
stating that removals from office were continuing with 
great perseverance ; that the custom-houses in Boston, 
New York, Philadelphia, Portsmouth in New Hamp- 
shire, and New Orleans, had been swept clear ; that 
violent partisans of Jackson were exclusively ap- 
pointed, and that every editor of a scurrilous newspa- 
per had been provided for. 

Again, in June of the same year Mr. Adams wrote : 
" Mr. Van Buren is now Secretary of State. He is the 
manager by whom the present administration has been 
I brought into power. He has played over again the 
e-ame of Aaron Burr in 1800, with the addition of 
V political inconsistency, in transferring his allegiance 
from Crawford to Jackson. He sold the State of New 
York to them both. The first bargain failed by the 
result of the choice of electors in the Legislature. The 
second was* barely accomplished by the system of party 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 177 

mjinagement established in that state ; and Van Buren 
is now enjoying liis reward." 

On the abolition of slavery, ]Mr. Adams observed : 
"It is the only part of European democracy which 
will find no favor in the United States. It may 
aggravate the condition of slaves in the South, but 
the result of the Missouri question, and the attitude 
of parties, have silenced most of the declainiers on 
that subject. This state of things is not to continue 
forever. It is possible that the danger of the aboli- 
tion doctrines, when brought home to Southern states- 
men, may teach them the value of the Union, as 
the only thing which can maintain their system of 
slavery." 

On the course and feelings of Mr. Jefferson on this 
subject, Mr. Adams thus expressed himself: "His 
love of liberty was sincere and ardent, but confined to 
himself, like that of most of his fellow-slaveholders. 
He was above that execrable sophistry of the South 
Carolina nullifiers, which w^ould make of slavery the 
corner-stone of the temple of liberty. He saw the 
gross inconsistency between the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence and the fact of negro 
slavery ; and he could not, or would not, prostitute 
the fiiculties of his mind to the vindication of that 
slavery, which, from his soul, he abhorred. But Jef- 
ferson had not the spirit of martyrdom. He would 
have introduced a flaming denunciation of slavery into 
the Declaration of Independence, but the discretion 
of his colleagues struck it out. He did insert a most 
eloquent and impassioned argument against it in his 

12 



) 



178 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIxNCY ADAMS. 

Notes on Virginia ; but, on that very account, the 
book was published ahnost against his will. lie pro- 
jected a plan of a general emancipation, in his revision 
of the Virginia laws, but finally presented a plan 
leaving slavery precisely where it was ; and, in his 
Memoir, he leaves a posthumous warning to the plant- 
ers that they must, at no distant day, emancipate their 
slaves, or that worse will follow ; but he withheld the 
publication of his prophecy till he should himself be 
in the grave." 

Mr. Adams was not long permitted to remain in 
retirement. In October, 1830, he was nominated, in 
the newspapers, to represent in Congress the district 
of Massachusetts in which he resided. I When asked 
if he would consent to be a candidate, he replied, in 
the spirit which had governed his whole life, never to 
seek and never to decline public service: " It must 
first be seen whether the people of the district will 
invite me to represent them. I shall not ask their 
votes. I wish them to act their pleasure." In the 
ensuing November he was elected Representative of 
the twelfth Congressional district of Massachusetts. 

On the 3d of January, 1831, Mr. Adams thus re- 
marked on the resolutions of the Legislature of Georgia 
setting at defiance the Supreme Court of the United 
States: "They are published and approved in the 
Telegraph, the administration newspaper at Washing- 
ton. By extending the laws of Georgia over the 
country and people of the Cherokees, flie constitution, 
laws, and treaties, of the United States, were quoad 
hoc set aside. They were chaff before the wind. In 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 179 

pursuance of these laws of Georgia, a Cherokee Indian 
is prosecuted for the murder of another Indian, before 
a state court of Georgia, tried by a jury of white men, 
and sentenced to death. He applies to a chief justice 
of the Court of the United States, who issues an 
injunction to the Governor and executive officers of 
Georgia, upon the appeal to the laws and treaties of 
the United States. The Governor of Georgia refuses 
obedience to the injunction, and the Legislature pass 
resolutions that they Avill not appear to answer before 
the Supreme Court of the United States. The consti- 
tution, the laws, and treaties, of the United States, 
are prostrate in the State of Georgia. Is there any 
remedy for this state of things ? None ; because the 
State of Georgia is in league with the Executive of 
the United States, who will not take care that the laws 
be faithfully executed. A majority of both houses 
of Congress sustain this neglect and violation of 
duty. There is no harmony in the government of 
the Union, The arm refuses its office. ' The whole 
head is sick, and the whole heart faint.' This exam- 
ple of the State of Georgia will be imitated by other 
states, and with regard to other national interests, — 
perhaps the tariff, more probably the public lands. 
As the Executive and Legislature now fail to sustain 
the Judiciary, it is not improbable cases may arise in 
which the Judiciary may fail to sustain them. The 
Union is in the most imminent danger of dissolution 
from the old, inherent vice of confederacies, anarchy 
m the members. To this end one third of the people 
is perverted, one third slumbers, and the rest wring 



180 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

their hands, with unavailing lamentations, in the fore- 
sight of evils they cannot avert." 

On the 4th of July, 1831, Mr. Adams delivered an 
oration before the inhabitants of the town of Quincy, 
in which he controverted the doctrine of Blackstone, 
the great commentator upon the laws of England, who 
maintained " that there is, and must be, in all forms 
of government, however they began, and by what 
right soever they subsist, a supreme, irresistible, abso- 
lute, uncontrolled authority, in which the jura summi 
imperii, or the rights of sovereujnty, reside." " It is 
not true," Mr. Adams remarks, " that there must 
reside in all governments an absolute, uncontrolled, 
irresistible, and despotic power ; nor is such a power 
absolutely essential to sovereignty. The direct con- 
verse of the proposition is true. Uncontrollable power 
exists in no government upon earth. The sternest 
despotisms, in every region and every age of the world, 
are and have been under perpetual control ; compelled, 
as Burke expresses it, to truckle and huckster. Un- 
limited power belongs not to the nature of m;m, and 
rotten will be the foundation of every government 
leaning upon such a maxim for its support. Least of 
all can it be predicated of any government professing 
to be founded upon an original compact. The pre- 
tence of an absolute, irresistible, despotic power, 
existing in every government somewhere, is incompati- 
ble with the first principle of natural right." 

This proposition Mr. Adams proceeds fully to illus- 
trate, and thus to apply : " This political sophism 
of identity between sovereign and despotic power 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 181 

has led, and continues to lead, into many vagaries, 
some of the statists of this our happy but disputatious 
Union. It seizes upon the brain of a heated politi- 
cian, sometimes in one state, sometimes in another, 
and its natural offspring is the doctrine of nullifica- 
tion ; that is, the sovereign power of any one state of 
the confederacy to nullify any act of the whole twenty- 
four states which the sovereign state shall please to 
consider as unconstitutional. Stripped of the sophis- 
tical argumentation in which this doctrine has been 
habited, its naked nature is an effort to organize 
insurrection against the laws of the United States ; to 
interpose the arm of state sovereignty between rebel- 
lion and the halter, and to rescue the traitor from the 
gibbet. Although conducted under the auspices of 
state sovereignty, it would not the less be levying war 
against the Union ; but, as a state cannot be punished 
for treason, nullification cases herself in the complete 
steel of sovereign power." " The citizen of the nul- 
lifying state becomes a traitor to his country by obe- 
dience to the law of his state, — a traitor to his state 
by obedience to the law of his country. The scaffold 
and the battle-field stream alternately wdth the blood 
of their victims. The event of a conflict in arms 
between the Union and one of its members, whether 
terminating in victory or defeat, would be but an 
alternative of calamity to all." 

Mr. Adams took his seat in the House of Rep- \ 
resentatives in December, 1831, and immediately / "^ 
announced to his constituents that he should hold 
himself bound in allegiance to no party, whether 



182 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

V^ctional or political. Ten years afterwards lie had 
occasion to explain to his fellow-citizens his policy 
and feelings at this period. " I thought this inde- 
pendence of party was a duty imposed upon nie by 
my peculiar position. I had spent the greatest part 
of my life in the service of the whole nation, and 
had been honored by their highest trust ; my duty of 
fidelity, of affection, and of gratitude, to the whole, 
was not merely inseparable from, but identical with, 
that which was due from me to my own comnion- 
wealtli. The internal conflict between slavery and 
freedom had been, and still was, scarcely perceptible 
in the national councils. The Missouri compromise 
had laid it asleep, it was hoped, forever. The devel- 
opment of the moral principle- which pronounced 
slavery a crime of man against his brother-man had 
not yet reached the conscience of Christendom. Eng- 
land, earnestly and zealously occupied in rallying the 
physical, moral, tmd intellectual energies of the civil- 
ized world against the African slave-trade, had scarcely 
yet discovered that it was but an instrument, and in 
truth a mitigation, of the great, irremissible wrong of 
slavery. Her final policy, the extinction of slavery 
throughout the earth, was not yet disclosed. The 
Jackson project of dismembering Mexico for the 
acquisition of Texas, already organized and in full 
operation, was yet profoundly a secret. I entered 
Congress without one sentiment of discrimination 
between the interests of the North and the South ; and 
my first act, as a member of the House, was, on pre- 
senting fifteen petitions from Pennsylvania for the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 183 

abolition of slavery within the District of Columbia, 
to declare, while moving their reference to the com- 
mittee of the District, that I was not prepared to 
support the measure myself, and that I should not. 
I was not then a sectional partisan, and I never have 
been."* 

When Mr. Adams was entering this new field of 
labor, Mr. Clay asked him how he felt at turning boy 
again, and going into the House of Representatives ; 
and observed that he would find his situation ex- 
tremely laborious. Mr. Adams replied : "I well 
know this ; but labor I shall not refuse so long as my 
hands, my eyes, and my brain, do not desert me." 

To understand the position in which Mr. Adams 
was placed, on his taking his seat in the House of 
Representatives, it is important that some of the 
events which had occurred during his absence from 
public life should be briefly recapitulated. General 
Jackson had been two years President of the United 
States. The alliance which he had entered into 
with Mr. Van Buren for their mutual advancement, 
to which allusion has been mad^ in a former chapter, 
had not resulted immediately as the high contracting 
parties probably intended. An obstacle to the ad- 
vancement of Mr. Van Buren to the Vice-Presidency 
presented itself which was insurmountable. John C. 
Calhoun, of South Carolina, possessed an influence in 
the slave states which it w^as important to conciliate, 
and imprudent to set at defiance. The allies were, 

* Address of John Qumcy Adams to his Constituents, at Brain tree, Septem- 
ber 17, 1842, p. 27. 



184 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

consequently, compelled to accede to his nomination 
as Vice-President, and Van Buren was forced to be 
content with the prospect of being appointed Secretary 
of State. 

The elevation of Calhoun to the Vice-Presidency, 
there is reason to believe, could not have been accept- 
able to Jackson. It appears, by the documents pub- 
lished by Calhoun in connection with his account of 
his controversy with Jackson, that William H, Craw- 
ford had, as early as December, 1827, taken direct 
measures to render the friendship of Calhoun sus- 
pected by Jackson. On the 14th of that month he 
wrote a letter to Alfred Balch, at Nashville, with the 
express purpose of its being shown to Jackson, con- 
taining the following statement : " My opinions upon 
the next presidential election" (against Adams and 
in fiivor of Jackson) " are generally known. When 
Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Cambreling made me a visit, 
last April, I authorized them, upon every proper occa- 
sion, to make these opinions known. The vote of the 
State of Georgia will, as certainly as that of Tennessee, 
be given to General .Jackson, in opposition to Mr. 
Adams. The only difficulty that this state has upon 
that subject is, that, if Jackson should be elected, 
Calhoun will come into power. I confess I am not 

apprehensive of such a result. For 

writes to me, ' Jackson ought to know, and if he does 
not he shall know, that, at the Calhoun caucus in 
Columbia, the term militarij chieftain was bandied 
about even more flippantly than it had been by Henry 
Clay, and that the family friends of Mr. Calhoun were 



M 



EMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 185 



most active in giving it currency ; and I know, per- 
sonally, that Calhoun favored jNIr. Ailanis' pretensions 
until Mr. Clay declared for him. He well knew that 
Clay would not have declared for Adams without it 
was well understood that he, Calhoun, was to be put 
down if Adams could effect it. If he was not friendly 
to his election, why did he suffer his paper to be pur- 
chased up by Adams' printers, without making some 
stipulation in favor of Jackson ? If you can ascertain 
that Calhoun will not be benefited by Jackson's elec- 
tion, you will do him a service by communicating the 
information to me. Make what use you please of this 
letter, and show it to whom you please."* 

That these opinions of Crawford concerning Cal- 
houn were communicated to Van Buren and Cambre- 
ling when they visited him, as he states, on their 
electioneering tour, in April, 1827, cannot be reason- 
ably questioned : and that Crawford's letter to Balch 
was also communicated to Jackson can as little be 
doubted. That at this period Calhoun's want of 
political sympathy with Jackson was publicly known 
and talked about at Nashville, is apparent from Cal- 
houn's address to the people of the United States in 
his controversy with Jackson, in which he bitterly 
complains: "I remained ignorant and unsuspicious 
of these secret movements against me till the spring 
of 1828, when vague rumors reached me that some 
attempts were making at Nashville to injure me." 

Why statements made by such a high authority as 

* See, for Crawford's letter and Calhoun's address, J\''iles' Weekly Rci/ia- 
ter, vol. XL., p. 12. 



186 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 

Crawford, so well adapted to kindle the inflammatory 
temperament of Jackson, and at once so auspicious to 
the hopes of Van Buren and so ominous to those of 
Calhoun, were not immediately made the subject of 
action, can only be accounted for by the fact that Cal- 
houn was at that time too strong in the affections of 
the South for them then to commence hostilities ; for, 
in that case he would, as Crawford intimated, have 
*' favored the pretensions of Adams," and possibly 
have defeated the plans of the alliance. Jackson, 
therefore, yielded, and allowed Calhoun to be run as a 
candidate for the Vice-Presidency on the same ticket 
with himself, and postponed any attempt to deprive 
him of his chance of succession until a more conve- 
nient opportunity. To this arrangement Van Buren 
also was compelled to submit, and, after Adams was 
superseded, and Jackson inaugurated President, he 
was appointed Secretary of State.* 

In April, 1830, when the Legislatures of New York 
and Pennsylvania took incipient measures to nominate 
Jackson for a second term of office, the favorable 
moment arrived to bring his artillery to bear upon 
Calhoun. At this time two letters of Crawford were 
brought to the mind of General Jackson, — the one to 
Alfred Balch, already referred to ; the other to John 
Forsyth, dated the 30th of April, 1830,t— in which 
Crawford expressly stated that "Mr. Calhoun had 

* Jackson's cabinet were, Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State ; Samuel 
D. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury ; John H. Eaton, Secretary of War ; 
John Branch, Secretary of the Navy ; John M'P. Berrien, Attorney-General j 
William T. Barry, Postmaster-General. 

■f For which see v\7/cs' Weekly Register, vol. xl., jdji. 12, 13. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 187 

made a proposition to the cabinet of Monroe for pun- 
ishlncj hiui for his conduct in the Seminole war." 
Jackson, greatly excited, immediately, on the 12th of 
May, 1830, addressed a letter to Mr. Calhoun, de- 
claring his great surprise at the information those 
letters contained, and inquiring whether he had 
moved or sustained any attempt seriously to alfect him 
in Monroe's cabinet council. Calhoun replied, that 
he " could not recognize the right of General Jackson 
to call in question his conduct in the discharge of a 
high oiTicial duty, and under responsibility to his con- 
science and his country only." The anger of Jack- 
son was not in the least assuaged by this reply, nor 
by the explanations which accompanied it. A corres- 
pondence ensued, which, with collateral and document- 
ary evidence, occupied fifty-two pages of an octavo 
pamphlet ; resulting in Jackson's declaration of his 
poignant mortification to see in Calhoun's letter, 
instead of a negative, an admission of the truth of 
Crawford's allegations. An irreconcilable alienation 
between Jackson and Calhoun was evinced in this 
correspondence ; a state of feeling which for the time 
was concealed from the public, but was well known 
to their respective partisans, who understood that at 
the approaching election the influence of the former 
would be thrown into the scale of Van Buren. Jack- 
son's intention of standing for the Presidency a second 
time was kept a profound secret until January, 1831. 
Under the supposition that he might decline, the par- 
tisans of Calhoun, Clay, and Van Buren, engaged in 
active measures to put them respectively into the field. 



188 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

From the party movements during this uncertainty 
it was clearly perceived that, if Jackson was not 
a<jain a candidate, a contest between Van Buren and 
Calhoun for the Presidency was unavoidable. Cal- 
houn's chance of success was H^eeminent, for he would 
unite in his favor all the votes and influence of the 
gouth, — Van Buren not having then had an opportu- 
nity to evince his entire subserviency to the slave- 
holding power. Jackson, into whose heart Van Buren 
ha»l wound himself, looked with little complacency on 
the probable success of Calhoun. Under tliese cir- 
cumstances, he resolved to enter the lists himself as 
a candidate for the Presidency, and, by taking Van 
Buren with him for the Vice-Presidency, put him at 
once in the best position to become his successor. 
Van Buren coincided in these views, and acquiesced 
in, if he did not originate, this measure. lie fore- 
saw that the popularity of Jackson would throw Cal- 
houn out of the field, whether he was a candidate at 
the next ensuing election for the Presidericy or Vice- 
Presidency. The time had now come to put an end to 
the hopes of Calhoun for the attainment of either of 
those high stations, by making public the animosity of 
Jackson ; but this could not be done without a strug- 
gle. Branch, Ingham, and Berrien, all members of 
Jackson's cabinet, were known friends to Calhoun, 
and far from being well disposed to Van Buren. 
Under these circumstances, Jackson resolved to dis- 
solve his cabinet, in which Van Buren himself held a 
place, and form another, better adapted to their united 
views. As a violent contest with the friends of Cal- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIKCY ADAMS. ] 89 

houn was anticipated, Van Biircn, if he sliould con- 
tinue Secretary of State, would be considered respon- 
sible for all Jackson's proceedings to frustrate Cal- 
houn's aspirations for the Presidency, which might 
injuriously affect his popularity in the Southern States. 
Yan Buren therefore retired upon a mission to England. 
Such were the general views and policy of these 
allied aspirants to the two highest offices of state, 
which public documents now make apparent, when^ in 
April, 1831, say the newspapers of the period, "an ^^ 
explosion took place in the cabinet at Washington, the ^ 
announcement of which came upon the public like a 
clap of thunder in a cloudless day."* . On the 7th of 
April, the Secretary of War, General Eaton, resigned, 
without giving any other reason than his own inclina- 
tion, and that he deemed the moment favorable, as 
General Jackson's " course of policy had been advan- 
tageously commenced." On the 11th of April, Van 
Buren resigned the office of Secretary of State. So 
far as his motive could be discerned through the haze 
of ambiguous and diplomatic language, it was that 
his name had been connected with that distracting 
topic, the question of successorship, which rendered 
his continuance in the cabinet embarrassing, and might 
be injurious to the public service. The two other 
secretaries, Ingham and Branch, were kept in igno- 
rance of these resignations until the 19th of April, 
when Jackson informed them that, to command public 
confidence and satisfy public opinion, he deemed it 
proper to select a cabinet of entirely new materials,! 

•See Alles' Weekly Rajktcr, vol. xl., pp. 129—1-15. t Ibid., pp. 152-3. 



190 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

and therefore rer^uested them to resign their respect- 
ive offices. They accordingly tendered their resigna- 
tions, which were accepted by the President, in a let- 
ter to each, couched in language perfectly identical, 
in which he admits that the dismissed officers had 
ftiithfully performed their respective official duties, 
but intimates that the want of harmony in the cabinet 
"made its entire renovation requisite."* Branch 
and Ingham both denied any want of harmony in the 
cabinet, and the latter declared that " it had never 
been interrupted for a moment, nor been divided in a 
single instance by difference of opinion as to the meas- 
ures of the government." f These contradictions, thus 
openly made, created intense curiosity, and public 
clamor for a full development of {\icts. Branch, in a 
letter dated May 31st, 1831, addressed to certain cit- 
izens of Bertie County, North Carolina, declared that 
"discord had been introduced into the ranks of the 
administration by the intrigues of selfish politicians."! 
The Attorney-General, Mr. Berrien, did not resign 
until the 15th of June ensuing, nor until he also had 
been invited to do so by Jackson. lie then declared 
that he resigned "simply on account of tlie Presi- 
dent's will," and that he knew of no want of har- 
mony in the cabinet which either had or ouglit to have 
impeded the operations of the administration. § In 
July, Mr. Ingham, on returning home, was received 
by a great cavalcade of his fellow-citizens, and was 
called upon for an explanation of " the extraordinary 

* JV7/e.s' Rcjister, vol. XL., p. 201. f Ibid., p. 220. 

t Ibid., p. 253. § Ibid., p. 304. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 101 

measure, the dissolution of the cabinet, which had 
shockeJ the public mind." He replied, that it was 
exclusively the act of the President, who alone could 
perfectly explain his own motives, and he deemed it 
improper for hiui to anticipate the explanation which 
the President must deem it his duty to make.* As 
Jackson made no explanation, Mr. Branch, after being 
repeatedly called upon in the public papers, author- 
ized the publication of a letter he had addressed to 
Edmund B. Freeman, dated the 22d of August, 1831,1 
in which he gave a full statement of the overbearing 
language and conduct of Jackson, and unequivocally 
declared that the contemporaneous resignation of 
Eaton and Van Buren was a measure adopted for the 
purpose of getting rid of the three offensive members 
of the cabinet ; that " their dismission had been stip- 
ulated for, and the reason was that Van Buren, hav- 
ing discovered that the three members of the cabinet 
(afterwards ejected) disdained to become tools to sub- 
serve his aml)itious aspirings, had determined to leave 
them as little power to defeat his machinations as pas- 
sible ; and that he had become latterly almost the sole 
confidant and adviser of the President." 

The details of this controversy belong to general 
history, and will be found in the documents of the 
period. Enough has been given to indicate the great 
influence Van Buren had acquired, for his own politi- 
cal advancement, by an unscrupulous subserviency to 
the overbearino; violence of the President. 

On this subject Mr. Adams observed : " Van Buren 



'AVcs' Weekly Register, vol. xl., p. 331. t Ibkl., vol. xu., pp. 5, 6. 



192 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

outwits Calhoun in the favor of Jackson. lie brouirht 
the administration into power, and now enjoys the 
reward of his intrigues. Jackson rides rough-shod 
over the Senate, in relation to appointments ; but they 
dare not oppose him." It was impossible, in view of 
these scenes of discord and mutual crimination, for 
Mr. Adams not to feel self-congratulation when he 
recollected the uninterrupted harmony "which, during 
four years, had prevailed in his own cabinet. From 
without it had been assailed with calumny and malig- 
nant passions ; but within was peace, quiet, mutual 
assistance and support. No jealousies disturbed the 
tranquillity of their meetings. No ambitious spirit 
had shaped measures to purposes of his own aggran- 
dizement. Though silent, he could not fail, while con- 
templating the comparison, to realize the triumph his- 
tory was preparing for himself and his administration. 
The contrast presented by its principles, when com- 
pared with those of his successor, must have been also 
a natural source of intense self-congratulation. Not- 
withstanding the warning voice of Henry Clay, a mil- 
itary chieftain had been placed in the chair of state. 
He entered it with the spirit of a conqueror, and con- 
ducted in it in the spirit of the camp. The gratifica- 
tion of his feelings, and the reward of his partisans, 
were apparently his chief objects. He dismissed from 
office, without trial, without charge, and without fixult, 
faithful and able men. During the whole period 
of Mr. Adams' administration not an officer of the 
government, from Maine to Louisiana, was dismissed 
on account of his political opinions. Many v.tII 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 103 

known to liiia as opposed to his reelection, and 
actively employed in behalf of his competitor, were 
permitted to hold their places, though subject to his 
power of dismission. Not one was discharged from 
that cause. In the early part of his administration 
appointments were promiscuously made from all the 
parties in the previous canvass. This course was 
pursued until an opposition w:is organized which 
denounced all appointments from its ranks as being 
made for party purposes. Of eight y newspapers em- 
ployed in publishing the laws during the four years of 
his Presidency, only tivelve or fifteen were changed, 
some for geographical, others for local considerations. 
Some papers among the most influential in the oppo- 
sition, but otherwise conducted with decorum, were 
retained. Of the entire number of changes, not more 
than four or five were made on account of their 
scurrilous character. During the same period not 
more than five members of Congress received official 
appointments to any office. Even these shocked 
General Jackson's patriotism, from their mischievous 
bearing on the purity of the national legislature, and 
the permanency of our republican institutions. Being 
then a candidate for the Presidency, in opposition to 
Mr. Adams, he deliberately declared to the Legisla- 
ture of Tennessee his firm conviction that no member 
of Congress ought to be appointed to any office except 
a seat on the bench ; and he added that he himself 
would conform to that rule. Notwithstanding this 
pledge, he appointed eight or ten members of Congress 

to office in the first four weeks of his Presidency. Mr. 
. 13 



194 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Clay publicly asserted his belief that within two months 
after Jackson had attained that high station more mem- 
bers of Congress had offices conferred on them " than 
were appointed by any one of his predecessors during 
their whole period of four or eight years." His pro- 
ceedings evidenced that among this, favorite class no 
of&ce is too high or too low for desire and acceptance, 
from the head of a department to the most subordinate 
office under a collector. ; On editors of newspapers he 
bestowed unexampled patronage. Fifteen or twenty 
of those who had been most active in his favor during 
the preceding canvass, — the most abusive of his 
opponents, and the most fulsome in his own praise, — 
were immediately rewarded with place. Of all at- 
tempts, his were the boldest and the most success- 
ful ever made to render the press venal, and to cor- 
rupt this palladium of liberty.* Happily the times 
were not propitious to give immediate development to 
these principles of permanent power. But the degree 
of success of this first attempt of one man to consti- 
\^ tute ^''himself the state " contains a solemn foreboding 

as to the possible future fate of our republic. For, 
although at this time the ambition of the individual 
was not fully gratified, enough was effected to encour- 
age the reckless and aspiring. The seeds of corrup- 
tion were thickly scattered. In that Presidency the 
doctrine was first promulgated, " To the victors 

^^ * The fiicts above stated are chiefly derived from a speech of Henry Clay, 
delivered at Lexington, Kentucky, on tlie ir)th of May, 182Vt, in which all the 
topics here touched are forcibly and elo(|Ucntly illustrated. It may be found 
at length in JViles' Weekly Reijister, vol. xxxvi., pp. 399 to 405. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 195 

belong the spoils.'' From that day, subserviency to the 
chief of the prevailing party became the conditidft on 
which station and phice were given or hohlen. In his 
hands was lodged the power of reward and punish- 
ment, to be exercised ruthlessly for party support 
and perpetuation ; resulting, in the higher depart- 
ments, in tame submission to the will of the chief, 
and, in the lower, in the adoption of the detestable 
maxim that all is fair in politics. The consequences 
are daily seen in the servility of office-holders and 
office-seekers ; in forced contributions, during pending 
elections, for the continuance of the prevailing power, 
and afterwards in a heartless proscription of all not ^ 
acceptable to the successful dynasty ; in the excluding 
every one from office who has not the spirit to be a 
slave, and filling the heart of every true lover of his 
country with ominous conjectures concerning the fate 
of our institutions. -^ 

During the early periods of Jackson's administra- 
tion, Mr. Adams, though in retirement, was neither 
unobserving nor silent concerning its proceedings. In 
January, 1830, in the course of a conversation with a 
senator from Louisiana on the politics and the in- 
trigues then going on at Washington in relation to 
the next presidential election, he said : " There are 
three divisions of the administration part}^ : one for 
General Jackson, whose friends wish his reelection ; 
one for Mr. Van Buren, and one for Calhoun. Van 
Buren sees he cannot ciiiht vears longer discharge 

O •/ CD O 

the duties of the Department of State ; and that ho 
must succeed at the end of four years, or not at all. 



19G MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Ilis friends insist that Jackson has given a pledge 
that he will not serve another term. Calhoun and 
his friends are equally impatient, and he is much dis- 
posed to declare himself against the leading measures 
of the present administration. But if Mr. Clay was 
brought forward by his friends as a candidate, it would 
close all the cracks of the administration party, and 
rivet them together." 

In the beginning of February, Mr. Adams re- 
marked : "All the members of Congress are full of 
rumors concerning the volcanic state of the adminis- 
tration. The President has determined to remove 
Branch, but was told that if he did the North Carolina 
senators would join the opposition, and all his nom- 
inations would be rejected. The administration is 
split up into a blue and green fiiction upon a point 
of morals ; an explosion has been deferred, but is 
expected." 

On the 26th of March, 1830, he again remarked : 
"There is a controversy between the Telegraph, Cal- 
houn's paper here, and the New York Courier, Van 
Buren's paper, upon the question whether Jackson is 
or is not a candidate for reelection as President, — 
the Courier insisting that he is, and the Telegraph 
declaring that it is premature to ask the question. 
Mr. Van Buren has got the start of Calhoun, in the 
merit of convincing General Jackson that the salva- 
tion of the country depends on his reelection. This 
establishes his ascendency in the cabinet, and reduces 
Calhoun to the alternative of joining in the shout 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 197 

' Hurra for Jackson ! ' or of being counted in oppo- 
sition." 

On the 28th of March, 1830, the rpiestion being 
still in agitation before the public whether Jackson, 
if a candidate, would be successful, Mr. Adams said : 
" Jackson will be a candidate, and have a fair chance 
of success. Ilis personal popularity, foundetl solely 
on the battle of New Orleans, will carry him through 
the next election, as it did through the last. The 
vices of his administration are not such as affect the 
popular feeling. lie will lose none of his popularity 
unless he should do something to raise a blister upon 
public sentiment, and of that there is no prospect. If 
he lives, therefore, and nothing external should hap- 
pen to rouse new parties, he may be reelected not 
only twice, but thrice." 

In June, 1830, he again expressed his views on 
the policy and prospects of the administration. He 
said it was impossible to foresee what wouhl be the 
fluctuations of popular opinion. Hitherto there were 
symptoms of changes of opinion among members of 
Congress, but none among the people. These could 
be indicated only by the elections. He had great 
doubts Avhether the majorities in the Legislatures of 
the free states would be changed by the approaching 
elections, and was far from certain that the next Leg- 
islature of Kentucky would nominate Mr. Clay in 
opposition to the reelection of General Jackson. The 
whole strength of the present administration rested on 
Jackson's personal popularity, founded on his military 
services. He had surrendered the Indians to the states 



108 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Avitliiu the bounds of which they are located. This 
woukl confirm and strengthen his popuhirity in those 
states, especially as he had burdened the Union with 
the expense of removing and indemnifying the Indians. 
He had taken practical ground against internal improve- 
ments and domestic industry, which would strengthen 
him in all the Southern States, He had, as might 
have been expected, thrown all his weight into the 
slavcholding scale ; and that interest is so compact, so 
consolidated, and so fervent in action, that there is 
every prospect it will overpower the discordant and 
loosely constructed interest of the free states. The 
cause of internal improvement will sink, and that of 
domestic industry will fall with or after it. There is 
at present a great probability that Jackson's policy 
will be supported by a majority of the people. 

After a conversation with Oliver Wolcott, the suc- 
cessor of Alexander Hamilton as Secretary of the 
Treasury under Washington, who had been subse- 
quently Governor of Connecticut, Mr. Adams re- 
marked : "Mr. Wolcott views the prospects of the 
Union with great sagacity, and with hopes more 
sanguine than mine He thinks the continuance 
of the Union will depend upon the heavy popu- 
lation of Pennsylvania, and that its gravitation will 
preserve the Union. He holds the South Carolina 
turbulence too much in contempt. The domineer- 
ing spirit naturally springs from the institution of 
slavery ; and when, as in South Carolina, the slaves 
are more numerous than their masters, the domineer- 
ing spirit is wrought up to its highest pitch of intense- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 195 

ness. The South Carolhihins are attempting to govern 
the Uiiion as they govern their slaves, and there are 
too many indications that, abetted as they are by all 
the slave- driving interest of the Union, the free por- 
tim will cower before them, and truckle to their inso- 
lence. This is my apprehension." 

While Jackson's nominations were pending before 
the Senate, a senator from New Hampshire said to Mr. 
Adams that he hoped the whole tribe of editors of 
newspapers would be rejected ; for he thought it the 
most dangerous precedent that could be established, 
and, if now sanctioned by the Senate, he despaired of 
its being controlled hereafter ; and added that he was 
almost discouraged concerning the permanency of our 
institutions. Mr. Adams replied, that his hopes were 
better, but that undoubtedly the giving offices to 
editors of newspapers was of all species of bribery the 
most dangerous. 

From the time Mr. Adams took his seat in the 
House of Representatives, in December, 1831, till the 
period of his death, few of his contemporaries equalled 
and none exceeded him in punctuality of attendance. 
He was usually among the first members in his place 
in the morning, and the last to leave it. On every 
question of general interest he bestowed scrupulous 
attention, yielding to it the full strength of his 
mind, and his extensive knowledge of public affairs. 
A full history of the proceedings of Congress during 
this period alone can do justice to his dcA^otion to the 
public service. In this memoir his views and course 
will no further be recorded than as they regard topic? 



200 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

obviously nearest his heart, and in which his princi- 
ples and character are developed with peculiar ability 
and power. 

In December, 1831, on the distribution of the sev- 
eral parts of the President's message to committees, 
Mr. Adams was appointed chairman of that on manu- 
factures. Against this position he immediately remon- 
strated, and solicited the Speaker to relieve him from 
it. He stated that the subject of manufactures was 
connected with details not familiar to him ; that, dur- 
ing the long period of a life devoted to public service, 
his thoughts had been directed in a very diiferent line. 
It was replied, that he could not be excused without a 
vote of the House ; that the continuance of the Union 
might depend on the questions relative to the tariff; 
and that it was thought his influence would have great 
weight in reconciling the Eastern States to such mod- 
ifications as he might sanction. He therefore yielded 
all personal considerations to the interests of his coun- 
try, and accepted the appointment. 

In the ensuing March, on being appointed on a 
committee to investigate the affairs of the United 
States Bank, Mr. Adams requested of the House to be 
excused from service on the Committee on Manufac- 
tures, giving the same reasons he had previously 
urged, and others resulting from the incompatibility 
of the two offices. An opposition was made by 
Cambreling, of New York, Barbour, of Virginia, 
and Drayton, of South Carolina, in speeches which 
were characterized by the newspapers of the times 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 201 

as " most extraordinary." * Cambroling said : " The 
present condition of the country and of the pub- 
lic mind demanded the intelligence, industry, and 
patriotism, for Avhich Mr. Adams was distinguished. 
The authority of his nam^e was of infinite importance." 
Mi\ Barbour followed in a like strain. " The member 
from Massachusetts," said he, "with whom I have 
l)een associated in the Committee on Manufactures, 
has not only fulfilled all his duties with eminent abil- 
ity, in the committee, but in a spirit and temper that 
demanded grateful acknowledgments, and exciled the 
highest admiration." He concluded with an appeal to 
Mr. Adams, " as a patriot, a statesman, and philan- 
thropist, as well as an American, feeling the full force 
of his duties, and touched by all their incentives to 
lofty action, to forbear his request." Mr. Drayton 
also, in a voice of eulogy, declared that, " Amidst 
all the rancor of political parties with which our 
country has been distracted, and from which, unhap- 
pily, we are not now exempt, it has always been , 
admitted that no individual was more eminently 
endowed with those intellectual and moral qualities 
which entitle their possessor to the respect of the 
community, and to entire confidence in the purity of 
his motives, than Mr. Adams." 

These politicians were the active and influential 
members of a party which had raised General Jackson 
to the President's chair. When laboring to displace 
Mr. Adams from that high station, that party had rep- 
resented him as " neither a statesman nor a patriot ; 

*J\1t7es' Weekly Register , vol. xui., pp. 8G — 88. '*'^'' 



202 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

without talents ; as a mere professor of rhetoric, capa- 
ble of making a corrupt bargain for the sake of power, 
and of condescending to intrigue for the attaiiunent of 
place and office." To hear the leaders of such a party 
now extolling him for integrity, diligence, and intelli- 
gence, upon whose continuance in office the hopes of 
the country and the continuance of the Union might 
depend, was a change in opinions and language which 
might well be attributed to the awakening of con- 
science to a sense of justice, and a desire for repara- 
tion of wrong, were it not that leader? of factions 
have never any other criterion of truth, or rule in the 
use of language, than adaptation to selfish and party 
purposes. 

Equally uninfluenced by adulation and undeterred 
by abuse, on the 23d of May, 1832, as chairman of 
the Committee on Manufactures, by order of a major- 
ity, Mr. Adams reported a bill, which, in presenting 
it, he declared was not coincident with the views of 
that majority, and that for parts he alone was responsi- 
ble. After lauding the anticipated extinction of the 
public debt, he proceeded to show, by a laborious 
research into its history, that such extinction had 
alvvays been contemplated, and that the policy of the 
government, from the earliest period of its existence, 
had concurred in the wisdom of this application of the 
revenue. lie proceeded to expose and deprecate that 
Southern policy, which seized on this occasion "to 
reduce the revenues of the Union to the lowest point 
absolutely necessary to defray the ordinary charges and 
indispensable expenditures of the government; " a sys- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 20 



r» 



tern wliich, by inevitable consequence and by avowed 
design, "left our shores to take care of themselves, 
our navy to perish by dry rot upon the stocks, our 
manufactures to wither under the blast of foreign 
competition;" and he urged, in opposition to these 
destructive doctrines, the duty of levying revenue 
enough for " common defence," and also to " protect 
manufactures," and supported his argument by a great 
array of facts ; severely animadverting upon those 
politicians who glorified themselves on the prosperous 
state of the country, and yet labored to break down 
that "system of protection for domestic manufactures 
by which this prosperity had been chiefly produced." 
The duty of " defensive preparation and internal im- 
provements" he maintained to be unquestionable, 
obligations resulting from the language and spirit of 
the constitution. The doctrine that the interests of the 
planter and the manufacturer were irreconcihible, and 
that duties for the protection of domestic industry oper- 
ate to the injury of the Southern States, he analyzed, 
illustrated, and showed to be fallacious, "striking 
directly at the heart of the Union, and leading inev- 
itably to its dissolution ; " a result to which more than 
one distinguished and influential statesman of the 
South had affirmed that "his mind was ruide up." 
The doctrine that the interest of the South is identified 
with the foreign competitor of the Northern manufac- 
turer, he denounced as in conflict with the whole history 
of our Revolutionary War, and a satire on our insti- 
tutions. If it should prove true that these interests 
were so irreconcilable as to cause a separation, cS some 



204 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Southern statesmen contended, after sucli separation the 
same state of irrcconciUible interests wouhl continue, 
and "with redoubled aggravation," resulting in an 
inextinguishable or exterminating w;ir between the 
brothers of this severed continent, which nothing but 
a foreign umpire could settle or adjust, and this not 
according to the interests of either of the parties, but 
his own. The consequences of such a state of things 
ho displayed with great power and eloquence, and 
concluded with alluding " to that great, comprehen- 
sive, but peculiar Southern interest, which is now 
protected by the laws of the United States, bvit 
which, in case of severance of the Union, must pro- 
duce consequences from which a statesman of either 
portion of it cannot but avert his eyes." 

Cotemporaneously with this report on manufactures, 
Mr. Adams, as one of the committee to examine an<l 
report on the books and proceedings of the Bank of 
the United States, submitted to the House of Repre- 
sentatives a report, signed only by himself and Mr. 
Watmough, of Pennsylvania, in which he declared his 
dissent from the report of the committee on that sub- 
ject. After examining their proceedings with minute- 
ness and searching severity, he asserted that they were 
without authority, and in flagrant violation of the rights 
of the bank, and of the principles on which the free- 
dom of this people had been founded. 

In February, 1832, Mr. Adams delivered a speech 
on the ratio of representation — on the duty of making 
the constituent body small, and the representatives 
numerous ; contending that a large representation and 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 205 

a small constituency was a truly republican principle, 
and illustrating it from history, and from its tendency 
to give the distinguished men of the different states 
opportunities to become acquainted with each other. 

In July ensuing, a vote censuring a member for 
words spoken in debate being on its passage in the 
House, Mr. Adams, when the roll was called, and 
his name announced, rose with characteristic spirit, 
and delivered a paper to the clerk, which contained 
the following words : "I ask to be excused from vot- 
ing on the resolution, believing it to be unconstitu- 
tional, inasmuch as it assumes inferences of fact from 
words spoken by the member, without giving the 
words themselves, and the fact not being warranted, 
in my judgment, by the words he did use." A major- 
ity of the house, being disposed to put down, and, if 
possible, disgrace Mr. Adams, refused to excuse him. 
On his name being called, he again declined voting, 
and stated that he did not refuse to vote from any con- 
tumacy or disrespect to the house, but because he had 
a right to decline from conscientious motives, and 
th^t he desired to place his reasons for declining upon 
the journals of the house. A member observed that, 
if they put those reasons on the journal, they wouhl 
spread on it their own condemnation ; adding that, 
by going out of the house, Mr. Adams might easily 
have avoided voting. The latter replied, "I do not 
choose to shrink from my duty by such an expedient. 
It is not my right alone, but the rights of all the mem- 
bers, and of the people of the United States, which 
are concerned in this question, and I cannot evade 



206 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

it. I regret the state of things, but I must abide by 
the consequences, whatev^er they may be." A motion 
made to reconsider the vote refusing to excuse him 
was lost — yeas fifty-nine, nays seventy-four. The 
Speaker then read the rule by which every member 
is required to vote, and stated that it was the duty of 
every member to vote on one side or the other. The 
question then being repeated, when th^ clerk called 
the name of jMr. Adams, he gave no response, and 
remained in his seat. A member then rose, said it 
was an unprecedented case, and moved two resolu- 
tions. By the one, the facts being first stated, the 
course pursued by Mr. Adams was declared " a breach 
of one of the rules of the house." By the other, a 
committee was to be appointed for inquiring and 
reporting " what course ought to be adopted in a case 
so novel and important." The house then proceeded 
to pass the original vote of censure on the member, 
without repeating the name of Mr. Adams. 

The next day the vote for a committee of inquiry 
oil the subject caused a desultory and warm debate, 
during which Mr. Adams took occasion to say that 
the whole affair was a subject of great mortification 
to him. The proposed resolution, after naming him 
personally, and affirming that he had been guilty of 
a breach of the rules of the house, proposed that 
a committee of inquiry should be raised, to con- 
sider what was to be done in a case so novel and 
important. On this resolution, which the mover 
seemed to suppose would pass of course, Mr. Adams 
said, that he trusted opportunity would be given 



MEMOIR. OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 207 

him to show the reasons which had prevented him from 
voting. 3Ir. Everett, of Massachusetts, then remon- 
strated with the majority of the house for attempt- 
ing thus to censure a man, such as they knew Mr. 
Adams to be, than whom he was confident the whole 
house wouhl bear him witness that there was not an 
individual on that floor more reguhir, more assiduous, 
or more laborious, in the discharge of his public duty. 
A motion w^as then made to lay the resolution on the 
table, wdiich prevailed — yeas eighty-nine, nays sixtij- 
three. 

Thus ended a debate which severely tested the firm- 
ness of the spirit of Mr. Adams. Neither seduced by 
the number nor quailing under the threats and vio- 
lence of his assailants, he maintained the rights of his 
public station, and with silent dignity set at defiance 
their overbearing attempts to terrify, until they aban- 
doned their purpose in despair, awed by the majestic 
power of principle. 

In December, 1832, when the South Carolina state 
convention was opposing the revenue laws with great 
violence, accompanied with threats of disunion, Pres- 
ident Jackson, in his message to Congress, recom- 
mended a reduction of the revenue, and a qualified 
abandonment of the system of protection ; and also 
that the public lands be no longer regarded as a source 
of revenue, and that they be sold to actual settlers at 
a price merely sufficient to reimburse actual expenses 
and the costs arising under Indian compacts. " In 
this message," said Mr. Adams, "Jackson has cast 
away all the neutrality he heretofore maintained upon 



208 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY^ ADAMS. 

the conflicting opinions ami interests of the difleront 
sections of the country, and surrenders the whole 
Union to the nullifiers of the South and the land 
speculators of the West. This I predicted nearly two 
years since, in a letter to Peter B. Porter." 

In January, 1833, with regard to a member friendly 
to modifying the tariff according to the Southern pol- 
icy, and who professed himself a radical, Mr. Adams 
remarked : " He has all the contracted prejudices of 
that political sect ; his whole system of government 
is comprised in the maxim of leaving money in the 
pockets of the people. This is always the high road 
to popularity, and it is always travelled by those who 
have not resolution, intelligence, and energy, to at- 
tempt the exploration of any other." 

On January IGth, 1833, President Jackson com- 
municated, in a message, the ordinance of the con- 
vention of South Carolina nullifying the acts of 
Congress laying duties on the importation of for- 
eign commodities, with the counteracting measures he 
proposed to pursue. On the 4th of February, on a 
bill for a modification of the tariff, Mr. Adams moved 
to strike out the enacting clause, thereby destroying 
the bill. In a speech characterized by the fearless 
spirit by which he was actuated, he declared his opin- 
ion that neither the bill then in discussion nor any 
other on the subject of the tariff ought to pass, until 
it was " known whether there was any measure by 
which a state could defeat the laws of the Union." 
The ordinance of South Carolina had been called a 
" pacific measure." It was just as much so as 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 209 

placinfj; a pistol at the breast of a traveller and 
demanding his money was pacific. Until that weapon 
Avas removed there ought to be no modification of the 
tarifT. jMr. Adams then entered at large into the 
duty of" government to protect all the great interests 
of the citizens. Bat protection might be extended in 
different forms to different interests. The complaint 
was, that government took money out of the pockets 
of one portion of the connnunity, to give it to another. 
In extending protection this must always be more or 
less the case. But, then, while the rights of one party 
were protected in this way, the rights of the other 
party were protected equally in another way. This he 
proceeded to illustrate. In the southern and south- 
western parts of this Union tliere existed a certain 
interest, which he need not more particularly desig- 
nate, which enjoyed, under the constitution and laws 
of the United States, an especial protection peculiar to 
itself. It was first protected by representation. There 
were on that floor upwards of twenty members who 
represented what in other states had no representation 
at all. It was not three days since a gentleman from 
Georgia said that the species of property now alluded 
to was "the machinery of the South." Now, that 
machinery had twenty odd representatives in that 
hall ; representatives elected, not by that machinery, 
but by those who owned it. Was there such repre- 
sentation in any other portion of the Union 'I That 
machinery had ever been to the South, in fact, the 
iiiling power of this government. AVas tliis not pro- 
tection ? This very protection had taken millions and 

14 



210 MEMOIR OF JOHN Q.UINCY ADAMS. 

millions of money from the free laboring population of 
this country, and put it into the pockets of the owners 
of Southern machinery. He did not complain of this. 
He did not say that it was not all right. What he 
said was, that the South possessed a great interest 
protected by the constitution of the United States. 
He was for adhering to the bargain ; but he did 
not wish to be understood as saying that he would 
agree to it if the bargain was now to be made over 
again. 

This interest was protected by another provision 
in the constitution of the United States, by which 
"no person held to service or labor in one state, 
under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, 
in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be 
discharged from such service or labor, but shall be 
delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such ser- 
vice or labor may be due." What was this but pro- 
tection to this machinery of the South ? And let it 
be observed that a provision like this ran counter to 
all the tenor of legislation in the free states. It was 
contrary to all the notions and feelings of the people 
of the North to deliver a man up to any foreign author- 
ity, unless he had been guilty of some crime ; and, 
but for such a clause in the compact, a Southern gen- 
tleman, who had lost an article of his machinery, 
would never recover him back from the free states. 

The constitution contained another clause guaran- 
teeing protection to the same interest. It guaranteed 
to every state in the Union a republican form of gov- 
ernment, protection against invasion, and, on the appli- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 211 

cation of the Legislature or Executive of any state, 
furnished them with protection against domestic vio- 
lence. Now, everybody knew that where this ma- 
chinery existed the state was more liable to domestic 
violence than elsewhere, because that machinery some- 
times exerted a self-moving power. The call for this 
protection had very recently been made, and it had 
been answered, and the power of the Union had been 
exerted to insure the owners of this machinery from 
domestic violence. 

On the 28th of the ensuing February, Mr. Adams, 
on the part of the minority of the Committee on 
Manufactures, made a report, signed by himself and 
Lewis Condit, of New Jersey, which was read and 
ordered to be printed by the House. In this report 
he took occasion to express his dissent from the 
doctrine of the message, which he asserted to be 
that in all countries generally, and especially in our 
own, the strongest and best part of our population 
— the basis of society, and the friends preeminently 
of freedom — are the ^^ u'calfhi/ landholders/' This 
he controverted with a spirit at once suggestive and 
sarcastic, as new, incorrect, and incompatible with the 
foundation of our political institutions. He maintained 
that this assertion was not true even in that part of the 
Union where the cultivators of the soil are slaves ; for, 
although there the landholders possess a large portion 
of the wealth of the community, they were far from 
constituting an equal proportion of its strength. Nor 
was it true in that portion of the Union where the culti- 
vators of the soil earn their bread bv the sweat of their 



212 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

brow, that they were the best part of society. They 
were as good as, but no better than, the other classes 
of the community. The doctrine is in opposition to the 
Dechiration of Independence and the government of 
the Union, which are founded on a very different prin- 
ciple — the principle that all men are born equal, 
and with equal rights. It cannot be assumed as a 
foundation of national policy, and is of a most alarm- 
ing and dangerous tendency, threatening the peace and 
directly tending to " the dissolution of the Union, by 
a complicated civil and servile war." He traced its 
consequences, present and future, in the proposition 
to give away the public lands, thereby withdrawing 
all aid from this source to objects of internal improve- 
ment ; and in the destiny to which it consigns our 
manufacturing interests, and those of the handicrafts- 
men and the mechanics of our populous cities and 
flourishing towns, for the benefit of these wealthy land- 
holders. 

The insincerity of the message and the danger of 
its doctrines he elucidates with scrutinizing severity, 
exposing its fallacies, and showing that, by its recom- 
mendations, " a nation, consisting of ten millions of 
freemen, must be crippled in the exercise of their 
associated power, unmanned of all the energies appli- 
cable to the improvement of their own condition, by 
the doubts, scruples, or fanciful discontents, of a por- 
tion among themselves less in number than double 
the number in the single city of New York." 

Its doctrine, which divides the people into the best 
and worst part of the population, is here denounceil 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 215 

fis " the never- failing source of tyranny and oppres- 
sion, of civil strife, the shedding of brothers' blood, 
and the total extinction of freedom." 

This report earnestly entreats the general govern- 
ment not to abdicate, by non user, the power vested 
in them of appropriating public money to great na- 
tional objects of internal improvements, and declares 
the final result of the doctrine of abdicating powers 
arbitrarily designated as doubtful is but the degrada- 
tion of the nation, the reducing itself to impotence, by 
chaining its own hands, fettering its own feet, and 
thus disabling itself from bettering its own condition. 
The impotence resulting from the inability to employ 
its own fiiculties for its own improvement, is the prin- 
ciple upon \vhich the roving Tartar denies himself a 
permanent habitation, because to him the wandering 
shepherd is the best part of the population ; upon 
which the American savage refuses to till the ground, 
because to him the hunter of the woods is the best 
part of the population. "Imperfect civilization, in 
all stages of human society, shackles itself with fanat- 
ical prejudices of exclusive favor to its own occupa- 
tions; as the owner of a plantation with a hundred 
slaves believes the summit of human virtue to be 
attained only by independent farmers, cultivators of 
the soil." 

Mr. Adams avers that the spirit of these recom- 
mendations indicates " a proposed revolution in the 
government of the Union, the avowed purpose of 
which is to reduce the general government to a simple 
machine. Simplicity," he adds, "is the essential 



214 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

characteristic in the condition of slavery. It is by tlio 
complication of the government alone that the freedom 
of mankind can be assured. If the people of these 
United States enjoy a greater share of liberty than 
any other nation upon earth, it is because, of all the 
governments upon earth, theirs is the most compli- 
cated." The simplicity which the message recom- 
mends is "an abdication of the povi^er to do good ; 
a divestment of all power in this confederate people 
to improve their own condition." 

The recommendation of the message, that the public 
lands shall cense as soon as practicable to be a source 
of public revenue, — that they shall be sold at a 
reduced price to actual settlers, and the future dispo- 
sition of them be surrendered to the states in which 
they lie, — Mr. Adams condemns as the giving away 
of the national domain, the property of the whole 
people, to individual adventurers ; and as taking 
away the property of one portion of the citizens, and 
giving it to another, the plundered portion of the com- 
munity being insultingly told that those on whom their 
lands are lavished are the best part of the population. 
Neither this, nor the surrender of them to the states 
in which they lie, can be done without prejudicing the 
claims of the United States, and of every particular 
state within which there are no public lands, and 
trampling under foot solemn engagements entered into 
before the adoption of the constitution. He reprobates 
thus giving away lands which were purchased by the 
blood and treasure of our revolutionary fathers and 
ourselves, which, if duly managed, might prove au 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 215 

inexhaustible fund for centuries to come. He main- 
tains that the policy indicated by this message regards 
the manufacturing interests of the country " as a vic- 
tim to be sacrificed." This view leads him into an 
illustrative and powerful argument on the duty of 
protection to domestic industry, in which are set forth 
its nature, limitations, and impressive obligations. 

In this report the absurd doctrines of nullification 
and secession are canvassed, and it is shown that 
they never can be carried out in practice but by a 
dissolution of the Union. The encouragement given 
by the policy of the administration to the unjust claims 
and groundless pretensions of South Carolina is ex- 
posed. The assumed irreconcilableness of the inter- 
ests of the great masses of population which geograph- 
ically divide the Union, of which one part is entirely 
free, and the other consists of masters and slaves, 
which is the foundation of those doctrines, is denied, 
and the question declared to be only capable of being 
determined by experiment under the compact formed 
by the constitution of the United States. The nature 
of that compact is analyzed, as well as the effect 
of that representation of property which it grants to 
the slaveholding states, and which has secured to 
them " the entire control of the national policy, 
and, almost without exception, the possession of the 
highest executive office of the Union." The causes 
and modes of operation by which this has been 
attained Mr. Adams illustrates to this effect : The 
Northern and wholly free states conceded that, while 
in the popular branch of the Legislature they them- 



21 G MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



selves should have a representation proportioned only 
to their numbers, the slaveholders of the South 
should, in addition to their proportional numbers, 
have a representation for three fifths of their living 
property — their machinery ; while the citizens of 
the free states have no addition to their number 
of representatives on account of their property ; nor 
have their looms and manufactories, or their owners 
in their behalf, a single representative. The conse- 
quent disproportion of numbers of the slaveholding 
representation in the House of Representatives has 
secured the absolute control of the general policy of 
the government, and especially of the fiscal system, 
the revenues and expenditures of the nation. Thus, 
while the free states are represented only according to 
their numbers, the slaveholders are represented also 
for their property. The equivalent for this privilege 
provided by the constitution is that the slaveholders 
shall bear a heavier burden of all direct taxation. 
But, by the ascendency which their excess of repre- 
sentation gives them in the enactment of laws, they 
have invariably in time of peace excluded all direct 
taxation, and thereby enjoyed their excess of repre- 
sentation without any equivalent whatever. This is, 
in substance, an evasion of the bilateral provision in 
the constitution. It gives an operation entirely one- 
id ed. It is a privilege of the Southern and slave- 
holding section of the Union, without any equivalent 
whatever to the Northern and North-western freemen. 
Always united in the purpose of regulating the affairs 
of the Avhole Union by the standard of the slavehold- 



3 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 21*^ 

ing interest, the disproportionate iiunihers of this 
section in the electoral colleges have enabled them, 
in ten out of twelve qiiadriennial elections, to con- 
fer the chief magistracy on one of their own citi- 
zens. Their suffrages at every election have been 
almost exclusively confined to a candidate of their 
own caste. Availing themselves of the divisions 
which, from the nature of man, always prevail in 
communities entirely free, they have sought and found 
out auxiliaries in other quarters of the Union, by asso- 
ciating the passions of parties and the ambition of 
individuals with their own purposes to establish and 
maintain throughout the confederated nation the slave- 
holders' policy. The ofiice of Vice-President — a 
station of high dignity, but of little other than con- 
tingent power — has been usually, by their indulgence, 
conceded to a citizen of the other section ; but even 
this political courtesy was superseded at the election 
before the last (1829), and both the offices of Presi- 
dent and Vice-President of the United States were, 
by the preponderancy of slaveholding votes, bestowed 
upon citizens of two adjoining slaveholding states. 
" At this moment (1833) the President of the United 
States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives, and the Chief Justice 
of the United States, are all citizens of this favored 
portion of this united republic." 

Mr. Adams, regarding "the ground assumed by the 
South Carolina convention for usurping the sovereign 
and limitless power of the people of that state to 
dictate the laws of the Union, and prostrate the leg- 



218 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

dative, executive, and judicial authority of the United 
^cites, as destitute of foundation as the forms and 
substance of their proceedings are arrogant, overbear- 
ing, tyrannical, and oppressive," declared his belief 
"that one particle of compromise with that usurped 
power, or of concession to its pretensions, would be a 
heavy calamity to the people of the whole Union, 
and to none more than to the people of South Caro- 
lina themselves ; that such concession would be a 
dereliction by Congress of their highest duties to 
their country, and directly lead to the final and irre- 
trievable dissolution of the Union." 



( 



CHAPTER IX. 

INFLUENCE OF MILITAUY SUCCESS. POLICY OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 

MR. ADAMS' SPEECH ON THE REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS FROM 

THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. HIS OPINIONS ON FREE- 
MASONRY AND TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES. — EULOGY ON WILLIAM WIRT, 

ORATION ON THE LIFE AND CHARACTER OF LAFAYETTE. — HIS 

COURSE ON ABOLITION PETITIONS ON INTERFERENCE WITH THE 

INSTITUTION OF SLAVERY — ON THE POLICY RELATIVE TO THE PUB- 
LIC LANDS. SPEECH ON DISTRIBUTING RATIONS TO FUGITIVES FROM 

INDIAN HOSTILITIES ON WAR WITH MEXICO. EULOGY ON JAMES 

MADISON. HIS COURSE ON A PETITION PURPORTING TO BE FROM 

SLAVES. FIRST REPORT ON JAMES SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. 

On the 4th of March, 1833, Andrew Jackson was 
inaugurated President of the United States a second 
time. Of two hundred and eighty-eight votes, the 
whole number cast by the electors, he had received two 
hundred and nineteen, Henry Clay being the chief 
opposing candidate. Martin Van Buren, having been 
elected Vice-President by one hundred and eighty-nine 
votes, was inaugurated on the same day. The coali- 
tion formed in 1827 by Jackson with Van Buren had 
thus fulfilled its purpose. Jackson's triumph was 
complete ; he had superseded Adams, defeated Clay, 
crushed Calhoun, and placed Van Buren in the most 
auspicious position to be his successor in the Presi- 
dent's chair. 

The infatuating influence of military success over 



220 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the human mind, and the readiness with which intel- 
ligent and well-disposed men, living under a constitu- 
tion of limited powders, while dazzled by its splendor, 
endure and encourage acts of despotic power, is at 
once instructive and suggestive. Violations of consti- 
tutional duty, known and voluntarily acquiesced in by 
a whole people, subservient to the will of a popular 
chieftain, may, and probably will, in time, change 
their constitution, and destroy their liberties. 

When Mr. Adams said that "Jackson rode rough- 
shod over the Senate of the United States," he 
only characterized the spirit by which he controlled 
every branch and department of the government. In 
every movement Jackson had displayed an arbitrary 
will, determined on success, regardless of the means, 
and had applied without reserve the corrupting 
temptation of office to members of Congress. He had 
rewarded subserviency by appointments, and pun- 
ished the want of it by removal ; had insolently 
called Calhoun to account for his official language in 
the cabinet of Monroe, and dismissed three members 
of his own, acknowledged to haA^e been unexception- 
able in the discharge of their official duties, because 
they would not submit to regulate the social inter- 
course of their families by his dictation. These and 
many other instances of his overbearing character in 
civil affiiirs had become subjects of severe public ani- 
madversion, without apparently shaking the submis- 
sive confidence of the citizens of the United States. 
Their votes on his second election indicated an un- 
equivocal increase of popular favor ; the admirer of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 22] 

arbitrary power exulted ; the lover of constitutional 
liberty mourned. The friends of despotism in the Old 
AVorld, ignorant of the real stamina of his popularity, 
regarded it as unquestionable evidence of the all- 
powerful influence of military achievement in the 
New. But the infatuation which had been the excit- 
ing: cause of General Jackson's first election to the 
Presidency would soon have evaporated under the 
multiplied evidences of an ill-regulated will, had il 
not been encouraged and supported by a local inter- 
est which predominated in the councils of the nation. 
With no desire to establish arbitrary power in the 
person of the chief magistrate of the Union, the slave- 
holders of the South instinctively perceived the iden 
tity of Jackson's interests with their own, and gave 
zeal and intensity to his support. The acquisition of 
the province of Texas, and its introduction into the 
Union as a slave state, with the prospective design 
of forming out of its territories four or five slave 
states, was a project in which they knew Jackson's 
heart was deeply engaged, and for the advancement 
of which he had peculiar qualifications. 

Such was the true basis of that extrordinary show 
of popularity which Jackson's second election as Pres- 
ident mdicated. Accordingly, his first measures were 
directed to the acquisition of Texas. These, as Mr. 
Adams said at the time, " were kept profoundly 
secret," but at this day they are clear and evident. 
The Florida treaty was accepted with approbation 
and joy by the government and people of the United 
States, under the administration of Mr. Monroe. But 



222 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the extension of its boundaries to the Colorado, which 
had been hoped for during the negotiation of that 
treaty between Mr. Adams and Onis, was not attained. 
Afterwards, during the Presidency of Mr. Adams, 
when every engine in the South and West was set 
at work to depreciate his character, and destroy his 
popuhirity, John Floyd, of Virginia, in an address 
to his constituents, attributed the relinquishment of 
our claim to Texas to him, and said he had thus 
deprived the South of acquiring two or more slave 
states. The same charge was brought against him by 
Thomas II. Benton, of Missouri, who afterwards, when 
apprized of the facts, openly acknowledged, in the 
Senate of the United States, that it was unjust, and 
an error. The calumny had the effect for which it 
was fabricated ; for Mr. Adams, out of respect for 
those through whose constitutional influence he had 
abandoned that claim, disdained to defend himself by 
publishing the truth. 

The fticts were, that slavery not being then per- 
mitted in Mexico, and the project of introducing it, by 

jthe annexation of Texas, not being yet developed, Mr. 

I'Adpms deemed the extension of the territory of the 

[United States to the Colorado so important, that when 
Onis absolutely refused to accede, he declined further 
negotiation, declaring that he would not renew it on 

iany other ground. He did not yield until those 
deeply interested in obtaining Florida had, by their 
urgency, persuaded him to treat on the condition of 
not including Texas. Although desirous, from gen- 
eral c^onsiderations of national interest and policy, to 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 223 

obtain that province, it was well kno^s'n that he would 
not engage in any conspiracy to wrest it from Mex- 
ico. His character and firmness in that respect less- 
ened his popularity in the Southern States, and ex- 
cited an inordinate zeal for Jackson. 

Accordingly, Mr. Poinsett, of South Carolina, min- 
ister of the United States in Mexico, immediately after 
the inauguration of President Jackson, in 1829, being 
apprized of his views and policy, took measures to 
civry them into effect. Under pretence of negoti- 
ating for the purchase of Texas, he remained in Mex- 
ico, and so mingled with the parties wdiich at the time 
distracted that republic as to become obnoxious to its 
government. The Legislature passed a vote to expel 
him from their territories, and issued a remonstrance 
intimating apprehensions of his assassination if he 
continued there ; charging him expressly with being 
concerned in establishing " some of those secret socie- 
ties which will figure in the history of the misfortunes 
of Mexico." It might have been expected that a for- 
eign minister would have repelled such an accusation 
with indignation. Poinsett, on the contrary, in a 
letter* addressed to the public, admitted that he had 
been instrumental in establishing Jive such secret soci- 
eties, ])ut asserted that they were only lodges of Free- 
masons, — merely philanthropic institutions, which 
had nothing to do with politics. For the truth of 
these assertions he appealed to his own personal char- 
acter, and to the character of the members of the 
secret societies, who, he declared, had been his inti- 

* See tb^s letter in J\,Ves' Weekly Register, vol. xx.wii., pp. 01 — 03. 



224 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

mate friends for more than three years, vouching 
himself for their patriotism and private virtues. Even 
this authentication did not create implicit belief in the 
minds of those to whom it was addressed. 

During these proceedings of Poinsett in Mexico 
the newspapers in the United States announced that 
the American government were taking proper steps 
for the acquisition of Texas. Intimations were also 
circulated of the sum Poinsett had been authorized to 
offer for it ; and, to make sure of its ultimate attain- 
ment, in the summer and autumn of 1829 emigrants 
from the United States were encouraged by the Amer- 
ican government to settle in Texas. To the Southern 
States the acquisition of that province was desirable, 
to open a new area for slavery. In open defiance, 
therefore, of a formal decree about this time issued 
by the rulers of Mexico prohibiting slavery in Texas, 
the emigrants to that province took their slaves with 
them ; for they knew that the object of the American 
government was not so much territory as a slave state, 
and that upon their effecting this result their admis- 
sion into the Union would depend. Such was the 
policy commenced and pursued during the first term 
of Jackson's administration. It was the conviction 
of this which led Mr. Adams publicly to declare that, 
though " profoundly a secret as it respected the pub- 
lic, it was then in successful progress ; " and to make 
it a topic of severe animadversion and warning, com- 
bined with language of prophecy, which events soon 
expanded into history. Every movement of Jackson 
was in unison with the policy and imbued with the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 225 

spirit of the slaveholders. lie manifested animosity 
to the protectiotr"of manufactures, and to internal j 

improvement by his veto of the bill for the Maysville 
Turnpike, and to the Bank of the United States by ^ 
his veto of the bill for extending its charter ; and, 
after violently denouncing the spirit of nullification, 
he publicly succumbed to it by proposing a modifica- 
tion of the tariff, in obedience to its demands. But 
tlie most flagrant act, and beyond all others charac- 
teristic of his indomitable tenacity of will, overleap- 
ing all the limitations of precedent and the constitu- 
tion, was his removal, on his own responsibility, of 
the deposits from the Bank of the United States. 
After ascertaining that Duane, the Secretary of the 
Treasury, would not be his tool in that service, he, 
in the language of that officer, "concentrating in 
himself the power to judge and execute, to absorb 
the discretion given to the Secretary of the Treasury, 
and to nullify the law itself," proceeded at once to 
remove him, and to raise Roger B. Taney from the 
office of Attorney- General to that of Secretary of the 
Treasury, for the sole object of availing himself of an 
instrument subservient to his purposes. 

In his annual message, at the opening of the session, 
Jackson announced to Congress that the Secretary of 
the Treasury had, by his orders, removed the public 
moneys from the Bank of the United States, and 
deposited them in certain state banks. 

The spirit of Mr. Adams kindled at this usurpation, 
and he gave eloquent utterance to his indignation. 
Among the remonstrances to Congress against this act 

15 



226 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCV ADAMS. 

of President Jackson, one from the Legislature of 
Massachusetts was sent to him for presentation. lu 
his attempt to fulfil this duty he was defeated three 
several times by the address of the Speaker of the 
House, and finally deprived of the opportunity by the 
previous question. He immediately published the 
speech he had intended to deliver, minutely scru- 
tinizing the President's usurpation of power. The 
remoA'al of the deposits, and the contract with the 
state banks to receive those deposits, he asserts were 
both unlawful ; and the measure itself neither law- 
ful nor just — an arbitrary act, without law and 
against law. He then proceeds to analyze the whole 
series of documents adduced by the Secretary of the 
Treasury, and by the Committee of Ways and Means 
in his aid, as precedents to justify the remo^"al of the 
deposits, and concludes a lucid and laborious argu- 
ment with, "I have thus proved, to the very rigor 
of mathematical demonstration, that the Committee 
of Ways and Means, to bolster up the lawless act 
of the Secretary of the Treasury, in transferring 
public moneys from their lawful places of deposit to 
others, in one of which, at least, the Secretary had 
an interest of private profit to himself, have ran- 
sacked all the records of the Treasury, from its first 
institution in July, 1775, to this day, in vain. From 
the whole mass of vouchers, to authenticate the 
lawful disposal of the public moneys, which that 
department can furnish, the committee have gathered 
fifty pages of documents, which they would pass off 
as precedents for this flagrant violation of the laws, 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 22 



^-j* 



and not one of them will answer their purpose. One 
of them alone bears a partial resemblance to the act 
of the present secretary ; and that one the very doc- 
ument adduced by the committee themselves pro- 
nounces and proves to be unlawful." 

After some remarks upon the office of Secretary of 
the Treasury, and the legal restraints upon it, he pro- 
ceeds : "I believe both the spirit and the letter of 
this law to have been violated by the present Secre- 
tary of the Treasury when he transferred the public 
funds from the Bank of the United States to the Union 
Bank of Baltimore, he himself being a stockhold(;r 
therein. iVnd so thorough is my conviction of this 
principle, and so corrupting and pernicious do I deem 
the example which he has thereby set to future Com- 
mittees of Ways and Means, to cite as precedents for 
yet ranker rottenness, that, if there were a prospect 
of his remaining in office longer than till the close of 
the present session of the Senate, I should deem it an 
indispensable, albeit a painful, duty of my station, to 
take the sense of this house on the question. And, 
sir, if, after this explicit declaration by me, the chair- 
man of the Committee of "Ways and Means has not 
yet slaked his thirst for precedents, he may gratify it 
by offering a fifth resolution, in addition to the four 
reported by the committee, as thus : Resolved, that 
the thanks of this house be given to Roger B. Taney, 
Secretary of the Treasury, for his pure and disinter- 
ested patriotism in transferring the use of the public 
funds from the Bank of the United States, where 
they were profitable to the people, to the Unbu 



228 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Bank of Baltimore, where tliey were profitable to him- 
self." 

He then proceeds to show, in a severe and search- 
ing examination of the proceedings of this secretary, 
that the transfers were utterly unwarrantable ; that 
he tampered with the public moneys to sustain the 
staggering credit of selected depositaries, and "scat- 
ter it abroad among swarms of rapacious political par- 
tisans." After stating and answering all the charges 
brought by the Secretary of the Treasury against the 
Bank of the United States, and showing their false- 
hood or futility, he declares all the proceedings of 
the directors of the bank to have been within the pale 
of action warranted by the laws of the land ; and, so 
long as they do this, " a charge of dishonesty or cor- 
ruption against them, uttered by the President of the 
United States, or by the Secretary of the Treasury, is 
neither more nor less than slander, emitted under the 
protection of official station, ngainst private citizens. 
This is both ungenerous and unjust. It is the abuse 
of the shelter of official station to circulate calumny 
with impunity." 

Mr. Adams next examines and severely reprobates 
the declaration of the President of the United States, 
that, "if the last Congress had continued in session 
one week longer, the bank would, by corrupt means, 
have procured a re-charter by majorities of two thirds 
in both houses of Congress ; " and declares the impu- 
tation as unjust as it was dishonorable to all tlie 
parties implicated in it. He did not believe there 
was one member in the last Congress, who voted 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 229 

against re-chartering of the bank, who could have been 
induced to change his vote by corrupt means, had the 
president and directors of the bank been base enough 
to attempt the use of them. " That the imputation is 
cruelly ungenerous towards the friends of the adminis- 
tration in this house, is," said Mr. Adams, "my 
deliberate ophiion ; and now, when we reflect that 
this defamatory and disgraceful suspicion, harbored or 
professed against his own friends, supporters, and 
adherents, was the real and efficient cause (to call it 
reason would be to shame the term), that it was the 
real motive for the removal of the deposits during the 
recess of Congress, and only two months before its 
meeting, what can we do but hide our heads with 
shame ? Sir, one of the duties of the President of 
the United States — a duty as sacred as that to which 
he is bound by his official oath — is that of maintain- 
ing unsullied the honor of his country. But how could 
the President of the United States assert, in the pres- 
ence of any foreigner, a claim to honorable principle 
or moral virtue, as attributes belonging to his country- 
men, when he is the first to cast the indelible stigma 
upon them? ' Vale^ venalis civitas, mox perifura, 
si emptorcm invenias/ was the prophetic curse of Ju- 
gurthaupon Rome, in the days of her deep corruption. 
If the imputations of the President of the United 
States upon his own partisans and supporters were 
Vue, our country would already have found a pur- 
chaser." 

" That this w\as the true and efficient cause," Mr. 
Adams proceeds, "of that removal, is evident, not 



230 MExMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

only by the positive testimony of Mr. Duane, but 
from the utter futility of the reasons assigned by Mr. 
Taney. Mr. Duane states that, on the second day 
after he entered upon his duties as Secretary of the 
Treasury, the President himself declared to him his 
determination to cause the public deposits to be re- 
moved before the meeting of Congress. He said that 
the matter under consideration was of vast conse- 
quence to the country ; that, unless the bank was 
broken down, it would break us down ; that, if the 
last Congress had remained a week longer in session, 
two thirds would have been secured for the bank by 
corrupt means ; and that the like result might be 
apprehended the next Congress ; that such a state 
bank agency must be put iu operation, before the 
meeting of Congress, as would show that the United 
States Bank was not necessary, and thus some inem- 
bers would have no excuse for voting for it. ' My 
suggestions,' added Mr. Duane, ' as to an inquiry by 
Congress, as in 1832, or a recourse to the judiciary, 
the President repelled, saying that it would be idle to 
depend upon either ; referring, as to the judiciary, to 
the decisions already made as indications of what 
would be the effect of an appeal to them in future.' 
"These, then," continued Mr. Adams, " were the 
effective reasons of the President for requiring the 
removal of the deposits before the meeting of Congress. 
The corruptibility of Congress itself, and the foregone 
decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States, 
were alike despised and degraded. The executive 
will was substituted in the place of both. These rea- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 23l 

sons had been ur<^C(l, without success, on one Secretary 
of the Treasury, Louis McLane. He had been pro- 
moted out of office, and they were now pressed upon 
the judgment and pliability of another. He, too, was 
found refractory, and displaced. A third, more accom- 
modating, was found in the person of Mr. Taney. To 
him the reasons of the President were all-sufficient, 
and he adopted them without reserve. They were all 
summed up in one, — ^ Sic volo, sic jubeo, stet pro 
RATIONS voluntas.^ 

"It is to be regretted that the Secretary of the 
Treasury did not feel himself at liberty to assign this 
reason. In my humble opinion it ought to have stood 
in front of all the rest. There is an air of conscious 
shamefacedness in the suppression of that which was 
so glaringly notorious ; aiul something of an appear- 
ance of trifling, if not of mockery, in presenting a 
long array of reasons, omitting that which lies at the 
foundation of them all. 

"The will of the President of the United States was 
the reason paramount to all others for the removal, by 
the Secretary of the Treasury, of the deposits from the 
Bank of the United States. It was part of his system 
of simplifying the machine of government, to which it 
was admirably adapted. It placed the whole revenue 
of the Union at any time at his disposal, for any pur- 
pose to which he might see fit to apply it. In vain 
had the laws cautiously stationed the Register, the 
Comptroller, the Treasurer, as checks upon the Secre- 
tary of the Treasury, so that the most trifling sum in 
the treasury should never be accessible to any one or 



232 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCi^ ADAMS. 

any two men. With a removal of the deposits and a 
transfer draft, millions on millions may be transferred, 
by the stroke of the pen of a supple and submissive 
Secretary of the Treasury, from place to place, at 
home and abroad, wherever any purpose, personal or 
political, may thereby be promoted. 

"To this final object of simplifying the machine 
two other maxims have been proclaimed as auxiliary 
fundamental principles of this administration. First, 
that the contest for place and power, in this country, 
is a state of war, and all the emoluments of ofiice are 
the spoils of victory. The other, that it is the invari- 
able rule of the President to reward his friends and 
punish his enemies." 

In the course of the years. 1832 and 1833, Free- 
masonry having become mingled with the politics of 
the period, Mr. Adams openly avowed his hostility to 
the institution, and addressed a series of letters to 
William L. Stone, an editor of one of the New York 
papers, and another to Edw^ird Livingston, one of its 
high officers, and a third to the Anti-masonic Conven- 
tion of the State of New York, in which his views, 
opinions, and objections to that craft, are stated and 
developed with his usual laborious, acute, and search- 
ing pathos and power. ' 

In October, 1833, Mr. Adams was applied to by 
one of his friends for minutes of the principal meas- 
ures of Mr. Monroe's administration, while he was Sec- 
retary of State, and also of his own, as President of 
the United States, to be used in his defence in a pend- 
ing election. "I cannot reconcile myself," said Mr. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 235 

Adams, "to write anything for my own election, not 
even for the refutation of the basest caUimnies. In all 
my election contests, therefore, my character is at the 
mercy 3f the basest slanderer ; and slander is so effect- 
ive a power in all our elections, that the friends of the 
candidates for the highest offices use it witliout scru- 
})le. I know by experience the power of party spirit 
upon the people. Party triumplis over party, and the 
people are all enrolled in one party or another. The 
people can only act by the machinery of party." 

About this time there was an attempt in Norfolk 
County to get up a Temperance Society, and a wish 
was expressed to him that he would take a lead in 
forming it. He declined from an unwillingness to 
shackle himself with obligations to control his indi- 
vidual, family, and domestic arrangements ; from an 
apprehension that the temperance societies, in their 
well-intended zeal, were already manifesting a tend- 
ency to encroach on personal freedom ; and also from 
an opinion that the cause was so well sustained by 
public approbation and applause that it needed not tlio 
aid of his special exertions, beyond that of his own 
example. 

On the 12th of December, 1833, Mr. Clay sent a 
message to the President of the United States, asking 
a copy of his written communication to his cabinet, 
made on the 18th of September, about the removal of 
the deposits from the United States Bank ; to which 
the President replied by a flat refusal. JNlr. Adams 
remarked : " There is a tone of insolence and insult 
in his intercourse with both houses of Conirress, 



234 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

qDecially since his reelection, which never was wit- 
h ^ssed between the Executive and Legishiture before. 
The domineering tone has heretofore been usually on 
the side of the legislative bodies to the Executive, 
and Clay has not been sparing in the use of it. He 
is now paid in his own coin." 

An intelligent foreigner, in relating a visit to Mr. 
Adams, in 1834, thus describes his powers of conver- 
sation : " He spoke with infinite ease, drawing upon 
his vast resources with the certainty of one who has 
his lecture before him ready written. He maintained 
the conversation nearly four hours, steadily, in one 
continuous stream of light. His subjects were the 
architecture of the middle ages, the stained glass of 
that period, sculpture, embracing monuments particu- 
larly. Milton, Shakspeare, Shenstone, Pope, Byron, 
and Southey, were in turn remarked upon. He gave 
Pope a wonderfully high character, and remarked that 
one of his chief beauties was the skill exhibited in 
varying the Ccesural pause, quoting from various parts 
of his author to illustrate his remarks. He said little 
on the politics of the country, but spoke at consider- 
able length of Sheridan and Burke, both of wdiom he 
had heard, and described with graphic effect. Junius, 
he said, was a bad man, but maintained that as a 
writer he had never been equalled." * •^ 
~ In March, 1834, Mr. Polk, of Tennessee, having 
indulged in an idolizing glorification of General Jack- 
son, with some coarse invectives against Mr. Adams, 
the latter rose and said : "I shall not reply to the gen- 

* JWcs' Weekly Ret/ister, vol. xlvii., p. 01. 



MEiMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 235 

tleman from Tennessee ; and I give notice, once foi 
all, that, whenever any admirer of tlie President of 
the United States shall think fit to pay his court to 
him in this house, either by a flaming panegyric upon 
him, or by a rancorous invective on me, he sliall ncvei 
elicit one word of reply from me. 

' No ; let the candied tongue lick absurd pomp, 
And crook the pregnant hinges of the knee, 
"Where thrift may follow fawning.' " 

On the 20th of February, 1834, Mr. Adams at- 
tended the funeral of Mr. Wirt, on which event he 
thus uttered his feelings : " For the rest of the day I 
was unable to attend to anything. I could tliink of 
nothing but William Wirt, — of his fine talents, of 
his amiable and admirable character ; the twelve 
years during wdiich we had been in close ofiicial rela- 
tion touethcr ; * the scene when he went with me to 
the capitol ; his w^arm and honest sympathy with me 
in my trials when President of the United States ; 
my interview with him in January, 1831, and his 
faithful devotion to the memory of Monroe. These 
recollections were oppressive to my feelings. I thought 
some public testimonial from me to his memory was 
due at this time. But Mr. Wirt was no partisan of 
the present administration. He had been a formal 
and dreaded opponent to the reelection of Andrew 
Jackson ; and so sure is anything I say or do to meet 
insuperable obstruction, that I could not imagine any- 

* Mr. Wirt was Attorney-General of the United States during the four last 
years of Mr. Monroe's and the whole of Mr. Adams' adiuluistration. 



23G MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

thing I could offer with the remotest prospect of suc- 
cess. I finally concluded to ask of the house, to- 
morrow morning, to have it entered upon the journal 
of this day that the adjournment was that the Speaker 
and members might be able to attend the funeral of 
William Wirt. I wrote a short address, to be delivered 
at the meeting of the house." 

It appears, by the journal of the house, that, on the 
21st of February, 1834, Mr. Adams, of Massachusetts, 
addressed the chair as follows : * 

" Mr. Speaker : A rule of this house directs that the Speaker 
shall examine and correct the journal before it is read. I 
therefore now rise, not to make a motion, nor to offer a reso- 
lution, but to ask the unanimous consent of tlie house to 
address to 3'ou a few words with a view to an addition which 
I wish to be made to the journal, of the adjournment of the 
house yesterday. 

" The Speaker, I presume, would not feel himself authorized 
to make the addition in the journal which I propose, without 
the unanimous consent of the house ; and I therefore now pro- 
pose it before the reading- of the journal. 

" I ask that, after the statement of the adjournment of the 
house, there be added to the journal words importing that it 
was to give the Speaker and members of the house an oppor- 
tunity of attending the funeral obsequies of William Wirt, 

" At the adjournment of the house on Wednesday I did not 
know what the arrangements were, or would be, for that 
mournful ceremony. Had I known them, I should have moved 
a postponed adjournment, which would have enabled us to 
join in the duty of paying the last tribute of respect to the 
remains of a man who was an ornament of his country and of 
human nature. 

"The customs of this and of the other house of Congress 



'O' 



5; 



*See Congressional Debates, vol. x., part 2d, p. 2758. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 237 

warrant the suspension of their daily labors in the public ser- 
vice, for the attendance upon funeral rites, only in the case of 
the decease of their own members. To extend the usage fur- 
ther might be attended with inconvenience as a precedent; 
nor should I have felt myself warranted in asking it upon any 
common occasion. r~v 

" Mr. Wirt had never been a member of either house of J 
Congress. But if his form in marble, or his portrait upon \ /^ 
canvas, were placed within these walls, a suitable inscription \ 
for it would be that of the statue of jNIoliere in the hall of 
the French Academy : ' Nothing was wanting to his glory ; 
he was wanting to ours.' 

" Mr. Wirt had never been a member of Congress ; but, for 
a period of twelve years, during two successive administra- 
tions of the national government, he had been the official and 
confidential adviser, upon all questions of law, of the Presi- 
dents of the United States ; and he had discharged the duties 
of that station entirely to the satisfaction of those officers and 
of the country. No member of this house needs to be re- 
minded how important are the duties of the Attorney-General 
of the United States ; nor risk I contradiction in affirming that 
they were never more ably or more faithfully discharged than 
by Mr. Wirt. 

"If a mind stored with all the learning appropriate to the 
profession of the law, and decorated with all the elegance of 
classical literature ; if a spirit imbued with the sensibilities of 
a lofty patriotism, and chastened by the meditations of a pro- 
found philosophy ; if a brilliant imagination, a discerning intel- 
lect, a sound judgment, an indefatigable capacity, and vigorous 
energy of application, vivified with an ease and rapidity of 
elocution, copious without redundance, and select without 
afiectation ; if all these, united with a sportive vein of humor, 
an inoffensive temper, and an angelic purity of heart; — if all 
these, in their combination, are the qualities suitable for an 
Attorney-General of the United States, in him they were all 
eminently combined. 

" But it is not my purpose to pronounce his eulogy. That 
pleasing task has been assigned to abler hands, and to a more 



238 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Buitablc oi'casion. He will there be presented in other, though 
not less interesting lights. As the penetrating delineator of 
manners and character in the British Spy ; as the biographer 
ot Patricia Henry, dedicated to the young men of your native 
commonwealth ; as the friend and delight of the social circle ; 
as the husband and father in the bosom of a happy, but now 
most afflicted family; — in all these characters I have known, 
admired, and loved him ; and now witnessing, from the very 
windows of this hall, the last act of piety and affection over 
his remains, I have felt as if this house could scarcely fulfil 
its high and honorable duties to the country which he had 
served, without some slight, be it but a transient, notice of 
his decease. The addition which I propose to the journal of 
yesterday's adjournment would be such a notice. It would 
give his name an honorable place on the recorded annals of 
his country, in a manner equally simple and expressive. I 
will only add that, while I feel it incumbent upon me to make 
this proposal, I am sensible that it is not a fit sultject for 
debate ; and, if objected to, I desire you to consider it as 
withdrawn." 

/ 
Mr. Adams proceeds :/" When the question of 

ngreeing to the proposed addition was put by the 
Speaker, Joel K. Mann, of Pennsylvania, precisely the 
rankest Jackson man in the house, said ' No.' There 
was a general call upon him, from all quarters of the 
house, to withdraw his objection ; but he refused. / 
Blair, of South Carolina, rose, and asked if the mani- 
ferjt sense of the house could be defeated by one objec- 
tion. The Speaker said I had requested that my 
proposal should be considered as withdrawn if an 
objection should be made, but the house was competent 
to give the instruction, upon motion made. I was then 
called upon by perhaps two thirds of the house, — 
' Move, move, move,' — and said, I had hoped the pro- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 239 

posal would have obtained the unanimous assent of 
the house, and as only one objection had been made, 
which did not appear to be sustained by the general 
sense of the house, I would make the motion that the 
addition I had proposed should be made on the jour- 
nal. The Speaker took the question, and nine tenths, 
at least, of the members present answered ' Ay.' 
There were three or four who answered * No.' But 
no division of the house was asked."/ 

In a debate in the House of Representatives, on the 
30th of April, 1834, on striking out the appropriation \ 
for the salaries of certain foreign ministers, in the 
course of his remarks, Warren R. Davis, of South Car- 
olina, turning with great feeling towards Mr. Adams, 
said : " Well do I remember the enthusiastic zeal with 
whicii we reproached the administration of that gen- 
thMiian, and the ardor and vehemence w^ith which we 
labored to bring in another. For the share I had in 
those transactions, — and it was not a small one, — / 
hope God ivill fonjive 7ne, for I never shall forgive 
mtjself" ■ 

In December, 1834, Mr. Adams, at the unanimous 
request of both houses of Congress, delivered an ora- 
tion on tlie life, character, and services, of Gilbert 
Motier do Lafayette. The House of Representatives 
ordered fifty thousand copies to be published at the 
national expense, and the Senate ten thousand. Mr. 
Clay said that, in proposing the latter number, he was 
governed by the extraordinary vote of the house ; but 
that, " if he were to be guided by his opinion of the 
great talents of the orator, and the extraordinary 



240 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

merit of the oration, he felt he should be unable to 
specify any number." 

In January, 1835, Mr. Adams, on presenting a peti- 
tion of one hundred and seven women of his Congres- 
sional district, praying for the abolition of slavery in the 
District of Columbia, moved its reference to a select 
committee, with instructions ; but stated that, if the 
house chose to refer it to the Committee on the District 
of Columbia, he should be satisfied. All he wished 
was that it should be referred to some committee. He 
begged those members who could command a majority 
of the house, and who, like himself, were unwilling 
to make the abolition question a stumbling-block, to 
take a course which should treat petitions with respect. 
He wished a report. It would be easy to show that 
such petitions relative to the District of Columbia 
ought not to be granted. He believed the true course 
to be to let error be tolerated ; to grant freedom of 
speech and freedom of the press, and apply reason to 
put it down. On the contrary, it was contended by 
Southern men that Congress had a right not to receive 
petitions, especially if produced to create excitement, 
and wound the feelings of Southern members. Mr. 
Adams advocated the right of petition. If the lan- 
guage was disrespectful, that objection might be stated 
on the journal. He knew that it was difficult to use 
language on this subject which slaveholders would 
not deem disrespectful. Congress had declared the 
slave-trade, when carried on out of the United States, 
piracy. He was opposed to that act, because he did 
not think it proper that this traffic without our bound- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCr ADAMS. 241 

aries should be called piracy, while there was no con- 
stitutional rii^-ht to interdict it within our borders. It 
was carried on in sight of the windows of the capitol. 
lie deemed it a fundamental principle that Congress 
liad no right to take away or abridge the constitu- 
tional right of petition. 

The petition was received, its commitment refused 
by the house, and it was laid on the table. 

About this time Mr. Adams remarked: "There is 
something extraordinary in the present condition of , 
parties throughout the Union. Slavery and democ-l 
racy — especially a democracy founded, as ours is, on- 
the rights of man — would seem to be incompatible ^ 
with each other ; and yet, at this time, the democ-. 
racy of the country is supported chiefly, if not 
entirely, by slavery. There is a small, enthusiastic 
party preaching the abolition of slavery upon the 
principles of extreme democracy. But the democratic 
spirit and the popular feeling are everywhere against 
them." ^ 

In August, 1835, Mr. Adams was invited to deliver 
an address before the American Institute of New York. 
After expressing his good wishes for the prosperity of 
the institution, and of their cause, he stated, in reply, '^• 

that the general considerations wdiich dictated the . 
policy of sustaining and cherishing the manufacturing - \^ 
interests were obvious, and had been presented by 
Judge Baldwin, Mr. J. P. Kennedy, and Mr. Everett, 
with eloquence and ability, in addresses on three pro- 
ceding years. If he should deliver the address re- 
quested, it would be expected that he would present 

IG 



242 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



tr I 



Cry 



\ 



the subject under new and different views. Jlis own 
opinion wtrs that one -great- difficulty, under .jyhich 
the nuumijicturino; interest of Jhe country labors is a 
political _cgmbmati on of the Soutli and the West 
ii^ainst it. The slaveholders of the South have bought 
the cooperation of the Western country by the bribe 
of the Western lands, abandoning to the new Western 
States their own proportion of this public property, 
and aiding them in the design of grasping all the 
lands in their own hands. Thomas H. Benton was 
the author of this system, which he brought forward 
as a substitute for' the American system of Mr. Clay, 
and to supplant the latter as the leading statesman of 
the West. Mr. Clay, by his tariff compromise with Mr. 
Calhoun, abandoned his own American system./ At 
the same time he brought forward a plan for distrib- 
uting among all the states of the Union the proceeds 
of the sales of the public lands. His bill for that 
purpose passed both houses of Congress, but was 
vetoed by President Jackson, who, in his annual mes- 
sage of December, 1832, formally recommended that 
all the public lands should Ije gratuitously given away 
to individual adventurers, and to the states in which 
the lands are situated. " Now," said Mr. Adams, 
'**"if, at this time, on the eve of a presidential election, 
I should, in a public address to the American Insti- 
tute, disclose the state of things, and comment upon 
it as I should feel it my duty to do, it would probably 
produce a great excitement and irritation ; would be 
charged with having a political bearing, and subject 
me to the imputation of tampering with the election." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 243 

On the 25tli of May, 1S3G, Mr. Adams delivered, 
in the House of Representatives, a speech on cortaifi 
resolutions for distributing rations Irom the public 
stores to the distressed fugitives from Indian hostilities 
in the States of Alabama and Georgia. " It is," said 
he, "I believe, the first example of a system of gra- 
tuitous donations to our own countrymen, infmitely 
more formidable in its consequences as a precedent, 
than from anything appearing on its face. I shall, 
nevertheless, vote for it. " "It is one of a class of legis- 
lative enactments with which we are already becoming 
familiar, and which, I greatly fear, will ere long grow 
voluminous. I shall take the liberty to denominate 
them the scalping -knife and tomahawk laws. They 
are all urged through by the terror of those instru- 
ments of death, under the most affecting and pathetic 
appeals, from the constituents of the sufferers, to all 
the tender and. benevolent sympathies of our nature. 
It is impossible for me to withhold from those appeals 
a responsive and yielding voice." He had voted, he 
said, for millions after millions, and would again and 
again vote for drafts from the public chest for the same 
purpose, should they be necessary, until the treasury 
itself should be drained. 

In seeking for a principle to justify his vote, he 
could find it nowhere but in the war power and its 
limitation, as expressed in the constitution of the 
United States by the words " //?c co?n?non defence and 
general icelfare.'" The war power was in this respect 
different from the peace power. The former was de- 
rived from, and regulated by, the laws and usages of 



JO 



244 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

nations. The latter was limited by regulations, and 
restricted by provisions, prescribed within the consti- 
tution itself. All the powers incident to war were, by 
necessary implication, conferred on the government of 
the United States. This was the power Avhich author- 
ized the house to pass this resolution. There was no 
other. " It is upon this principle," said Mr. Adams, 
" that I shall vote for this resolution, and did vote 
against the vote reported by the slavery committee, 
' that Congress possess no constitutional authority to 
interfere with the institution of slavery.' I do not 
admit that there is, even among the j)eace powers of 
Congress, no such authority ; but in many ways Con- 
gress not only have the authority, but are bound to 
interfere with the institution of slavery in the states." 
Of this he cites many instances, and asks if, in case 
of a servile insurrection, Congress would not have 
power to interfere, and to supply money from the 
funds of the whole Union to suppress it. 

"Tf^T^ this speech Mr. Adams exposes the eflects of 
I the slave influence in the United States, by the 
|l n^easures taken to bring about a war with Mexico. 

~ i7"I3y the proposal that she should cede to us a terri- 
tory Lirge enough to constitute nine states equal in 
extent to Kentucky. 2. By making this proposi- 
tion at a time when swarms of land-jobbers from the 
United States were covering these Mexican territories 
with slaves, in defiance of the laws of Mexico by 
which slavery had been abolished throughout that 
republic. 3. By the authority given to General 
Gaines to invade the Mexican republic, and which 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 245 

h;ul brought on the war then raging, which was for the 
reestablishment of shivery in territories where it had 
been abolished. It was a war, on the part of the United 
States, of conquest, and for the extension of slavery. 
Mr.^A3ams"'"fheii foretoTdV what subsequent events 
proved, that the war then comtuencing would be, on 
the part of the United. States, "a war of aggression, 
conquestT^nd for the reestablishment of slavery where 
it has been abolished. In that war" the banners of 
freedom will be the banners of Mexico, and your 
banners —T blush to speak the word — will be the 
banners of slavery." 

The nature of that war, its dangers, and its conse- 
quences, Mr. Adams proceeded to analyze, and to show 
the probability of an interference on the part of Great 
Brittiin7'wIio " will probably ask you a perplexing 
question — by what authority you, with freedom, inde- 
pendence, and democracy, on your lips, are waging a 
war of extermination, to forge new manacles and fet- 
ters instead of those which are falling from the hands 
and feet of men? She will carry emancipation and 
aholition with her in every fold of her flag ; while 
your stars, as they increase in numbers, will be over- 
cast by the murky vapors of oppression, and the only 
portion of your banners visible to the eye will be the 
blood-stained stripes of the taskmaster." 

"Mr. Chairman," continued Mr. Adams, "are you 
ready for all these wars? A Mexican war; a war 
with Great Britain, if not with Franco ; a general 
Indian war ; a servile war ; and, as an inevitable con- 
sequence of them all, a civil war ; — for it must ulti 



\ 



246 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

iviatoly terminate in a war of colors, as well as of races. 
And do you imagine that while, with your eyes open, 
you are wilfully kindling these wars, and then closing 
your eyes and blindly rushing into them, — do you 
imagine that, while in the very nature of things your 
own Southern and South-western States must be the 
Flanders of these complicated wars, the battle-field 
upon which the last great conflict must be fought 
between slavery and emancipation, — do you imagine 
that yourCongress will have no constitutional author- 
ity to interfere with the institution of slavery, in any 
{^\^j , icay, in the states of tl)is_ confederacy ? Sir, they must 
and will interfere with it, perhaps to sustain it by war, 
perhaps to abolish it by treaties of peace ; and they_, 
will not only possess the OT^ jpower so to 

interfere, but they will bo bound in duty to do it by 
the express provisions of the constitution itself. 

"From the instant that your slaveholding states 
become the theatre of war, civil, servile, or foreign, 
from that instant the war powers of Congress extend 
to interference with the institution of slavery in every 
way by which it can be interfered with, from a claim 
of indemnity for slaves taken or destroyed, to the 
cession of the state burdened with slavery to a foreign 
power. 

" Little reason have the inhabitants of Georgia and 
of Alabama to complain that the government of the 
United States has been remiss or neglectful in pro- 
tecting them from Indian hostilities. The fact is 
directly the reverse. The people of Alabama and 
Georgia are now suffering the recoil of their own 



O.IT 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 24 

unlawful weapons. Georgia, sir, Georgia, by tram- 
pling upon the faith of our national treaties with the 
Indian tribes, and by subjecting them to her state 
laws, first set the example of that policy which is now 
in the process of consummation by this Indian war 
In setting this example she bade defiance to the 
authority of the government of this nation. She nul- 
lified your laws ; she set at naught your executive and 
judicial guardians of the common constitution of the 
land. To what extent she carried this policy, the 
dungeons of her prisons, and the records of the Su- 
preme Judicial Court of the United States, can tell. 

" To those prisons she committed inoffensive, inno- 
cent, pious ministers of the Gospel of truth, for car- 
rying the light, the comforts, the consolations of that 
Gospel, to the hearts and minds of those unhappy 
Indians. A solemn decision of the Supreme Court of 
the United States pronounced that act a violation of 
your treaties and your laws. Georgia defied that 
decision. Your executive government never carried 
it into execution. The imprisoned missionaries of 
the Gospel were compelled to purchase their ransom 
from perpetual captivity by sacrificing their rights as 
freemen to the meekness of their principles as Chris- 
tians : and you have sanctioned all these outrages 
upon justice, law, and humanity, by succumbing to 
the power and the policy of Georgia ; by accommo- 
dating your legislation to her arbitrary will ; by tear- 
ing to tatters your old treaties with the Indians, and 
by constraining them, under peine forte et dure, to the 
mockery of signing other treaties with you, which, at 



248 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCr ADAMS. 

the first moment when it shall suit your purpose, you 
will again tear to tatters, and scatter to the four winds 
of heaven ; till the Indian race shall be extinct upon 
this continent, and it shall become a problem, beyond 
the solution of antiquaries and historical societies, what 
the red man of the forest was. 

" This, sir, is the remote and primitive cause of the 
present Indian war — your own injustice sanctioning 
and sustaining that of Georgia and Alabama. This 
system of policy was first introduced by the present 
administration of your national government. It is 
directly the reverse of that system which had been 
pursued by all the preceding administrations of this 
government under the present constitution. That sys- 
tem consisted in the most anxious and persevering 
efforts to civilize the Indians, to attach them to the 
soil upon which they lived, to enlighten their minds, 
to soften and humanize their hearts, to fix in per- 
manency their habitations, and to turn them from 
the wandering and precarious pursuits of the hunter 
to the tillage of the ground, to the cultivation of corn 
and cotton, to the comforts of the fireside, to the 
delights of home. This was tlie system of Washing- 
ton and of Jefferson, steadily pursued by all their 
successors, and to which all your treaties and all your 
laws of intercourse with the Indian tribes were accom- 
modated. The whole system is now broken up, and 
instead of it you have adopted that of expelling, by 
force or by compact, all the Indian tribes from their 
own territories and dwellings to a region beyond the 
Mississippi, beyond the Missouri, beyond the Arkan* 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 24'j 

sas, bordering upon Mexico ; and there you have 
deluded them with tlie hope that they will find a per- 
manent abode, a final resting-place from your never- 
ending rapacity and persecution. There you have 
undertaken to lead the willing, and drive the reluctant, 
by fraud or by force, by treaty or by the sword and 
the rifle — all the remnants of tlie Seminoles, the 
Creeks, of the Cherokees and the Choctaws, and of 
how many other tribes I cannot now stop to enumer- 
ate. In the process of this violent and heartless oper- 
ation you have met with all the resistance whicli men 
in so helpless a condition as that of the Indian tribes 
can make. 

" Of the immediate causes of the war we are not 
yet fully informed ; but I fear you will find them, like 
the remoter causes, all attributable to yourselves. 

"It is in the last agonies of a people forcibly torn 
and driven from the soil which tliey had inherited from 
their fathers, and which your own example, and 
exhortations, and instructions, and treaties, had riv- 
eted more closely to their hearts — it is in the last 
convulsive struggles of their despair, that tliis war has 
originated ; and, if it bring some portion of the 
retributive justice of Heaven upon our own people, it 
is our melancholy duty to mitigate, as far as the public 
resources of the national treasury will permit, the dis- 
tresses of our own kindred and blood, suffering under 
the necessary consequences of our own wrong. I shall 
vote for the resolution." 

This speech, perhaps one of the most suggestive 
and prophetic ever made, appears in none of the news- 



/ 



250 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

papers of the time, and was published by Mr. Adams 
from his own minutes and recollections. 

In September, 1836, Mr. Adams, at the request of 
the Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of the 
city of Boston, delivered a eulogy on the life and 
character of James Madison. 

On the 7th of January, 1837, Mr. Adams offered 
to present the petition of one hundred and fifty women 
for the abolition of slavery in the District of Colum- 
bia. Mr. Glascock, of Georgia, objected to its recep- 
'tion. Mr. Adams said that the proposition not to re- 
ceive a petition was directly in the face of the constitu- 
tion. He hoped the people of this country would be 
spared the mortification, the injustice, and the wrong, 
of a decision that such petitions should not be received. 
It was indeed true that all discussion, all freedom of 
speech, all freedom of the press, on this subject, had 
been, within the last twelve months, violently assailed 
in every form in which the liberties of the people 
could be attacked. He considered these attacks as 
outrages on the constitution of the country, and the 
freedom of the people, as far as they went. But the 
proposition that such petitions should not be received 
went one step further. He hoped it would not obtain 
the sanction of the house, which could always reject 
such petitions after they had been considered. Among 
the outrages inflicted on that portion of the people of 
this country whose aspirations were raised to the great- 
est improvement that could possibly be effected in the 
condition of the human race,— the total abolition of 
slavery on earth, — that of calumny was the 7Tiost 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 251 

glaring. Their petitions were treated with contempt, < 
and the petitioners themselves loaded with foul and 1^^^ 
infamous imputations, poured forth on a class of citi- / 
zens as pure and virtuous as the inhabitants of any 
section of the United States. 

Violent debates and great confusion in the house 
ensued; but when the question, "Shall the petition 
be received?" was put, it was decided in the aflirma- 
tive — one hundred and twentij-scven ayes, seventy-five 
nays. jMr. Adams then moved that the petition should 
be referred to the Committee on the District of Colum- 
bia. This was superseded by a motion to lay it on 
the table, whicli passed in the affirmative — ayes one 
hundred and fifty ^ m\js fifty. 

On the 18th of January, 1837, the House of Rep- 
resentatives passed a resolution, — one hundred and 
thirty-nine ayes, sixty-nine nays, — "that all peti- 
tions relating to slavery, without being printed or 
referred, shall be laid on the table, and no action shall 
be had thereon." 

On the Gth of February, 1837, Mr. Adams stated 
that he held in his hand a paper, on which, before 
presenting it, he desired to have the decision of the 
Speaker. It purported to come from slaves ; and he 
wished to know if such a paper came within the order 
of the house respecting petitions. Great surprise and 
astonishment were expressed by the slaveholders in 
the house at such a proposition. One member pro- 
nounced it an infraction of decorum, that ought to 
be punished severely. Another said it was a viola- 
tion of the dignity of the house, and ought to be taken 



252 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

and burnt. WaJdy Thompson, of South Carolina, 
moved the following resolution : " Resolved, that the 
Honorable John Quincy Adams, by the attempt just 
made by him to introduce a petition purporting on its 
face to be from slaves, has been guilty of a gross disre- 
spect to the house ; and that he be instantly brought to 
the bar to receive the severe censure of the Speaker." 
Charles E. Haynes, of Georgia, moved " to strike out 
all after Resolved, and insert ' that John Quincy Adams, 
a representative from the State of Massachusetts, has 
rendered himself justly liable to the severest censure 
of this house, and is censured accordingly, for having 
attempted to present to the house the petition of 
slaves.' " Dixon 11. Lewis, of iilabama, offered a mod- 
ification of Waddy Thompson's resolution, which he 
accepted, " that John Quincy Adams, by his attempt 
to introduce into the house a petition from slaves, for 
the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, 
committed an outrage on the rights and feelings of 
a large portion of the people of this Union, and a fla- 
grant contempt on the dignity of this house ; and, by 
extending to slaves a privilege only belonging to free- 
men, directly invites the slave population to insurrec- 
tion ; and that the said member be forthwith called 
to the bar of this house,. , and be censured by the 
Speaker." 

After violent debates and extreme excitement, Mr. 
Adams rose and said : "In regard to the resolutions 
now before the house, as they all concur in naming 
me, and charging me with high crimes and misde- 
meanors, and in calling me to the bar of the house to 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 253 

answer for my crimes, I have thought it my duty to 
remain silent until it should be the pleasure of the 
house to act on one or other of those resolutions. I 
suppose that, if I shall be brought to the bar of the 
house, I shall not be struck mute by the previous 
question, before I have an opportunity to say a word 
or two in my own defence. But, sir, to prevent fur- 
ther consumption of the time of the house, I deem it 
my duty to ask them to modify their resolution. It 
may be as severe as they propose, but I ask them to 
change the matter of fact a little, so that when I come 
to the bar of the house, I may not, by a single 
word, put an end to it. I did not present the peti- 
tion, and I appeal to the Speaker to say that I did 
not. I said I had a paper purporting to be a peti- 
tion from slaves. I did not say what the prayer of 
the petition was. I asked the Speaker whether he 
considered such a paper as included within the general 
order of the house, that all petitions, memorials, res- 
olutions, and papers, relating in any way to the sub- 
ject of slavery, should be laid upon the table. I 
intended to take the decision of the Speaker before I 
went one step towards presenting, or offering to pre- 
sent, that petition. I stated distinctly to the Speaker 
that I should not send the paper to the table until the 
question was decided whether a paper from persons 
declaring themselves slaves was included within the 
order of the house. This is the/ac^." 

It having been stated in one of the resolutions that 
the petition was for the abolition of slavery, Mr. 
Adams said the gentleman moving it " must amend 



254 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 

his resolution ; for, if the house should choose to read 
this petition, I can state to them they would find it 
something very much the reverse of that which the 
resolution states it to be ; and that if the gentleman 
from Alabama still shall choose to bring me to the bar 
of the house, he must amend his resolution in a verv 
important particular, for he probably will have to put 
into it that my crime has been for attempting to intro- 
duce the petition of slaves that slavery should not be 
abolished ; and that the object of these slaves, who 
have sent this paper to me, is precisely that which he 
desires to accomplish, and that they are his auxilia- 
ries, instead of being his opponents." 

In respect of the allegation that he had introduced 
a petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia, Mr. Adams said : "It is well known to all 
the members of this house — it is certainly known to 
all petitioners for the abolition of slavery in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia — that, from the day I entered this 
house to the present moment, I have invariably here, 
and invariably elsewhere, declared my opinions to be 
adverse to the prayer of petitions that call for the abo- 
lition of slavery in the District of Columbia. But, sir, 
it is equally well known that, from the time I entered 
this house, down to the present day, I have felt it a 
sacred duty to present any petition, couched in respect- 
ful language, from any citizen of the United States, 
be its object what it may — be the prayer of it that in 
which I could concur, or that to which I was utterly 
opposed. I adhere to the right of petition ; and let 
me say here that, let the petition be, as the gentleman 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADxVMS. 255 



from Virginia has stated, from free negroes, prosti- 
tutes, as he supposes, — fur he says there is one 
put on this pa})er, and he infers that the rest are 
of the same description, — that has not altered my 
opinion at alL Where is your hiw which says that the 
mean, the k)w, and the degraded, shall be deprived of 
the right of petition, if their moral character is not 
good? Where, in the Lmd of freemen, was the right 
of petition ever phiced on the exclusive basis of 
morality and virtue ? Petition is supplication — it is 
entreaty — it is prayer ! And where is the degree of 
vice or immorality which shall deprive the citizen of 
the right to supplicate for a boon, or to pray for 
mercy ? Where is such a law to be found ? It docs 
not belong to the most abject despotism. There is no 
absolute monarch on earth who is not compelled, by 
the constitution of his country, to receive the petitions 
of his people, whosoever they may be. The Sult:;u 
of Constantinople cannot walk the streets and refuse 
to receive petitions from the meanest and vilest in the 
land. This is the law even of despotism ; and what 
does your law say ? Does it say that, before present- 
ing a petition, you shall look into it, and see whether 
it comes from the virtuous, and the great, and the 
mighty? No, sir ; it says no such thing. The right 
of petition belongs to all ; and so far from refusing to 
present a petition because it might come from those 
low in the estimation of the world, it would be an 
additional incentive, if such an incentive were want- 
ing. 

In the course of this debate Mr. Thouipsivn, of South 



256 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



(Jl 



1 



Carolina, said that the conduct of Mr. Adams was a 
proper subject of inquiry by the Grand Jury of the 
District of Columbia, and stated that such, in a like 
case, would be the proceedings under the law in South 
Carolina. Mr. Adams, in reply, exclaimed : "If this 
is true, — if a member is there made amenable to the 
Grand Jury for words spoken in debate, — I thank God 
I am not a citizen of South Carolina ! Such a threat, 
when brought before the world, would excite nothing 
but contempt and amazement. What ! are we from 
the Northern States to be indicted as felons and incen- 
diaries, for presenting petitions not exactly agreeable 
to some members from the South, by a jury of twelve 
men, appointed by a marshal, his office at the pleas- 
ure of the President ! If the gentleman from South 
Carolina, by bringing forward this resolution of cen- 
sure, thinks to frighten me from my purpose, he has 
mistaken his man. I am not to be intimidated by 
him, nor by all the Grand Juries of the universe. " 

After a debate of excessive exacerbation, lasting 
for four days, only twenty votes could be found indi- 
rectly and remotely to censure. In the course of this 
discussion circumstances made it probable that the 
names appended to the petition were not the signatures 
of slaves, and that the whole was a forgery, and 
designed as a hoax upon him. On which suggestion 
Mr. Adams stated to the house that he now believed 
the paper to be a forgery^ by a slaveholding master, 
for the purpose of daring him to present a petition 
purporting to be from slaves ; that, having now rea- 
son to believe it a forgery, he should not present the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 257 

petition, whatever might be the decision of the house. 
If he should present it at all, it woukl be to invoke 
the authority of the house to cause the author uf it to 
be prosecuted for the forgery, if there were competent 
judicial tribunals, and he could obtain evidence to 
prove the fact. He did not consider a forgery com- 
mitted to deter a member of Congress from the dis- 
charge of his duty as a hoax* 

In March, 1837, Mr. Adams addressed a series of 
letters to his constituents, transmitting his speech 
vindicating his course on the right of petition, and 
his proceedings on the subject of the presentation of 
a petition purporting to be from slaves. These letters 
were published in a pamphlet, and were at the time 
justly characterized as "a triumphant vindication of 
the right of petition, and a graphic delineation of 
the slavery spirit in Congress ; " and it was further 
said of them, that, " apart from the interest excited 
by the subjects under discussion, and viewed only as 
literary productions, they may be ranked among the 
highest literary efforts of the author. Their sarcasm 
is Junius-like — cold, keen, unsparing." A few ex- 
tracts may give an idea of the spirit and character of 
this publication. 

Commenting on Mr. Thompson's resolution, as mod- 
ified by Mr. Lewis (p. 249), Mr. Adams exclaims : 

" My constituents ! Reflect upon the purport of this 
resolution, which was immediately accepted by Mr. 
Thompson as a modification of his own, and as unhes- 
itatingly received by the Speaker. lie well knew I 

* JViles' Weekly Register, N. S., vol. i., pp. 385—390, et seq. 
17 



258 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

had made no attempt to introduce to the house a peti- 
tion from slaves ; and, if I had, he knew I should 
have done no more than exercise my right as a member 
of the house, and that the utmost extent of the power 
of the house would have been to refuse to receive the 
petition. The Speaker's duty was to reject instantly 
this resolution, and tell Mr. Lewis and Mr. Thompson 
that the first of his obligations was to protect the 
rights of speech of members of that house, which I had 
not in the slightest degree infringed. But the Speaker 
was a master. 

" Observe, too, that in this resolution the notable 
discovery was first made that I had directly invited the 
slaves to insurrection ; of which bright thought Mr. 
Thompson afterwards availed himself to threaten me 
with the Grand Jury of the District of Columbia, as 
an incendiary and felon. I pray you to remember 
this, not on my account, or from the suspicion that I 
could or shall ever be moved from my purpose by such 
menaces, but to give you the measure of slaveholding 
freedom of speech, of the press, of action, of thought ! 
If such a question as I asked of the Speaker is a direct 
invitation of the slaves to insurrection, forfeiting all 
my rights as representative of the people, subjecting 
me to indictment by a grand jury, conviction by a 
petit jury, and to an infamous penitentiary cell, I ask 
you, not what freedom of speech is left to your repre- 
sentative in Congress, but what freedom of speech, of 
the press, and of thought, is left to yourselves. 

" There is an express provision of the constitution 
that Congress shall pass no law abridging the right of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 259 

petition ; and here is a resolution declaring that a 
member ought to be considered as regardless of the 
feelings of the house, the rights of the Soutli, and an 
enemy to the JJmon^ for presenting a petition. 

"Regardless of the feelings of the house! What 
have the feelings of the house to do with the free 
agency of a member in the discharge of his duty 't 
One of the most sacred duties of a member is to pre- 
sent the petitions committed to his charge ; a duty 
which he cannot refuse or neglect to perform without 
violating his oath to support the constitution of the 
United States. He is not, indeed, bound to present 
all petitions. If the language of the petition be dis- 
respectful to the house, or to any of its members, — 
if the prayer of the petition be unjust, immoral, or 
unlawful, — if it be accompanied by any manifesta- 
tion of intended violence or disorder on the part of 
the petitioners, — the duty of the member to present 
ceases, not from respect for the feelings of the house, 
but because those things themselves strike at the free- 
dom of speech and action as well of the house as of 
its members. Neither of these can be in the least 
degree affected by the mere circumstance of the con- 
dition of the petitioner. Nor is there a shadow of 
reason why feelings of the house should be outraged 
by the presentation of a petition from slaves, any more 
than by petitions from soldiers in the army, seamen in 
the navy, or from the working-women in a manufac- 
tory. 

"Regardless of the rights of the South! What 
are the rights of the South ? What is the South ? 



260 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

As a component portion of this Union, the population 
of the South consists of masters, of slaves, and of free 
persons, white and colored, without slaves. Of which 
of these classes would the rights be disregarded by the 
presentation of a petition from slaves? Surely not 
those of the slaves themselves, the suffering, the labo- 
rious, the producing classes. 0, no ! there would be 
no disregard of their rights in the presentation of a 
petition from them. The very essence of the crime 
consists in an alleged undue regard for their rights ; 
in not denying them the rights of human nature ; in 
not classing them with horses, and dogs, and cats. 
Neither could the rights of the free people without 
slaves, whether white, black, or colored, be disre- 
garded by the presentation of a petition from slaves. 
Their rights could not be affected by it at all. The 
rights of the South, then, here mean the rights of the 
masters of slaves, which, to describe them by an inof- 
fensive word, I will call the rights of mastery. These, 
by the constitution of the United States, are recog- 
nized, not directly, but by implication, and protection 
is stipulated for them, by that instrument, to a certain 
extent. But they are rights incompatible with the 
inalienable rights of all mankind, as set forth in the 
Declaration of Independence — incompatible with the 
fundamental principles of the constitutions of all the 
free states of the Union ; and therefore, when provided 
for in the constitution of the United States, are indi- 
cated by expressions which must receive the narrowest 
and most restricted construction, and never be enlarged 
by implication. There is, I repeat, not one word, not 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 261 

one syllable, in the constitution of the United States, 
which interdicts to Congress the reception of petitions 
from slaves ; and as there is express interdiction to 
Congress to abridge by law the right of petition, that 
right, upon every principle of fair construction, is as 
much the right of the South as of the North — as 
much the right of the slave as of the master ; and the 
presentation of a petition from slaves, for a legitimate 
object, respectful in language, and in its tone and 
character submissive to the decision which the house 
may pass upon it, far from degrading the rights of 
the South, is a mark of signal homage to those 
rights. 

" An enemy to the Union for presenting a petition ! 
— an enemy to the Union ! I have shown that the 
presentation of petitions is one of the most imperious 
duties of a member of Congress. I trust I have 
shown that the right of petition, guaranteed to the 
people of the United States, without exception of \ 
slaves, express or implied, cannot be abridged by any^' 
act of both houses, with the approbation of the Presi- 
dent of the United States ; but this resolution, by the 
act of one branch of the Legislature, would effect an 
enormous abridgment of the right of petition, not only 
by denying it to full one sixth part of the whole peo- 
ple, but by declaring an enemy to the Union any 
member of the house who should present such a peti- 
tion. 

" When the resolution declaring that I had trifled 
with the house was under consideration, one of the 
most prominent allegations laid to my charge was 



^ 



262 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

that, by asking that question, I had intended indi- 
rectly to cast ridicule upon that resolution, and upon 
the house for adopting it. Nor was this entirely with- 
out foundation. I did not intend to cast ridicule upon 
the house, but to expose the absurdity of that resolu- 
tion, against which I had protested as unconstitutional 
and unjust. But the characteristic peculiarity of this 
charge against me was, that, while some of the gen- 
tlemen of the South were urging the house to pass a 
vote of censure upon me, for a distant and conjectural 
inference of my intention to deride that resolution, 
others of them, in the same debate, and on the same 
day, were showering upon the same resolution direct 
expressions of unqualified contempt, without even being 
called to order. Like the saints in Iludibras, — 

' The saints may do the same thing by 
The Spirit in sincerity, 
Which other men are prompted to, 
And at the devil's instance do ; 
And yet the actions be contrary, 
Just as the saints and wicked vary,' — 

SO it was with the gentlemen of the South. While 
Mr. Pickens could openly call the resolution of the 
18th of January a miserable and contemptible resolu- 
tion, — while Mr. Thompson could say it was only fit 
to be burnt by the hands of the hangman, w^ithout 
rebuke or reproof, — I was to be censured by the house 
for casting ridicule upon them by asking the ques- 
tion whether the resolution included petitions from 
slaves." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 2G3 

About this time Mr. Adams received an invitation 
\o attend a public meeting at New York during the 
session of Congress. He replied: "I do not hold 
myself at liberty to absent myself from the house a 
single day. Such is my estimate of representative 
duty, confirmed by a positive rule of the house itself, 
not the less obligatory for being little observed." 
/ In December, 1835, President Jackson transmitted 
to Congress a message relative to the bequest of four 
hundred thousand dollars, from James Smithson, of 
London, to the United States, for the purpose of estab- 
lishing at Washington an institution " for the increase 
and diffusion of knowledge among men;" and sub- 
mitted the subject to Congress for its consideration. 
A question was immediately raised 'whether Congress 
had power, in its legislative capacity, to accept such a 
bequest ; and also whether, having the power, its 
acceptance was expedient. The message of the Pres- 
ident was referred to a committee, of which Mr. Adams 
was appointed chairman. No subject could be better 
adapted to excite into action his public spirit than the 
hopes awakened for his country by the amount of this 
bequest, and the wisdom of the objects for which it 
was appropriated. The general tenor of the testator's 
will excited numerous private interests and passions 
with regard to the application of the fund. Mr. Adams 
immediately brought the whole strength and energy 
of his mind to give it a proper direction. Although 
some of his recommendations were slighted, and an 
object near his heart, an astronomical observatory, was 
resisted by party spirit, his zeal and perseverance 



264 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

effectually prevented the bequest from being diverted 
to local and temporary objects, and his general views 
relative to Mr. Smithson's design ultimately pre- 
vailed. 

In January, 1836, Mr. Adams, as chairman of the 
committee, made a report, declaring that Congress 
was competent to accept the bequest, and that its 
acceptance was enjoined by considerations of the most 
imperious obligations, and suggesting some interesting 
reflections on the subject. The testator, he said, was 
a descendant in blood from the Percys and the Sey- 
mours, — two of the most illustrious names of the 
British islands; — the brother of the Duke of North- 
umberland, who, by the name of Percy, was known 
at the sanguinary opening scenes of our Revolutionary 
War, and fought as a British officer at Lexington and 
Bunker Hill, and was the bearer of the despatches, 
from the commander of the British forces to his o-ov- 
ernment, announcing the event of that memorable day^ 
"The suggestions which present themselves to the 
mind," Mr. Adams adds, " by the association of these 
historical recollections with the condition of the testa- 
tor, derive additional interest from the nature of the 
bequest, the devotion of a large estate to an institu- 
tion ' for the increase and diffusion of knowledge 
among men.' " The noble design of Mr. Sraithson 
Mr. Adams thus proceeds to illustrate • 

" Of all the foundations of establishments for pious or char- 
itable uses, which ever signalized the spirit of the age, or the 
comprehensive beneficence of the founder, none can be named 
more deserving of the approbation of mankind than this. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 2C5 

Should it be faitlifully carried into effect, with an earnestness 
and sagacity of application, and a steady perseverance of pur- 
suit, proportioned to the means furnished by the will of tlie 
founder, and to the greatness and simplicity of his design, as 
by himself declared, ' the increase and dlHusion of knowledge 
among men,' it is no extravagance of anticipation to declare 
that his name will be hereafter enrolled among the eminent 
benefactors of mankind. 

" The attainment of knowledge is the high and exclusive 
attribute of man, among the numberless myriads of animated 
beings, inhabitants of the terrestrial globe. On him alone is 
bestowed, by the bounty of the Creator of the universe, the 
power and the capacity of acquiring knowledge. Knowledge 
is the attribute of his nature which at once enables him to 
improve his condition upon earth, and to prepare him for the 
enjoyment of a happier existence hereafter. It is by this 
attribute that man discovers his own nature as the link be- 
tween earth and heaven ; as the partaker of an immortal spirit ; 
as created for higher and more durable ends than the countless 
tribes of beings which people the earth, the ocean, and the 
air, alternately instinct with life, and melting into vapor, or 
mouldering into dust. 

"To furnish the means of acquiring knowledge is, therefore, 
the greatest benefit that can be conferred upon mankind. It 
prolongs life itself, and enlarges the sphere of existence. The 
earth was given to man for cultivation — to the improvement 
of his own condition. Whoever increases his knowledge mul- 
tiplies the uses to which he is enabled to turn the gift of his 
Creator to his own benefit, and partakes in some degree of 
that goodness which is the highest attribute of Omnipotence 
itself" 

"If, then, the Smithsonian Institution, under the smile of 
an approving Providence, and by the faithful and permanent 
application of the means furnished by its founder to the pur- 
pose for which he has bestowed them, should prove effective 
to their promotion, — if they should contribute essentially to 
ike increase and diffusion of knowledge among men, — to what 



266 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

higher or nobler object could this generous and splendid dona- 
tion have been devoted ? " 

After further illustrating the renown of the name 
of Percy from the historical annals of England, Mr. 
Adams proceeds to urge other considerations, from 
among which we make the following extracts : 

" It is, then, a high and solemn trust which the testator has 
committed to the United States of America ; and its execution 
devolves upon their representatives in Congress duties of no 
ordinary importance. In adverting to the character of the 
trustee selected by the testator for the fulfilment of his inten- 
tions, it is deemed no indulgence of unreasonable pride to 
mark it as a signal manifestation of the moral effect of our 
political institutions upon the opinions and the consequent 
action of the wise and good of other regions and of distant 
climes, even upon that nation from whom we generally boast 
our descent." 

The report continues : 

"In the commission of every trust there is an implied trib- 
ute to the integrity and intelligence of the trustee, and there 
is also an implied call for the faithful exercise of those proper- 
ties to the fulfilment of the purposes of the trust. The tribute 
and the call acquire additional force and energy when the 
trust is committed for performance after the decease of him 
by whom it is granted ; when he no longer lives to constrain 
the effective fulfilment of his design. The magnitude of the 
trust, and the extent of confidence bestowed in the committal 
of it, do but enlarge and aggravate the pressure of the obliga- 
tion which it carries with it. The weight of duty imposed is 
proportioned to the honor conferred by confidence without 
reserve. Your committee are fully persuaded, therefore, that, 
with a grateful sense of the honor conferred by the testator 
upon the political institutions of this Union, the Congiess of 
the United States, in accepting the bequest, will feci, in all its 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 2G7 

power and plenitude, the obligation of responding to the con- 
fidence reposed by him, with all the fidelity, disinterestedness, 
and perseverance of exertion, which may carry into effective 
execution the noble purpose of an endowment for the increase 
and diffusion of knowledge among men." 

The report concludes with recommending a bill, 
which passed in both branches, vesting authority in 
the President to take measures to prosecute, in the 
court of chancery in England, the right of the United 
States to this bequest. 



CHAPTER X. 

MARTIN VAN BUREN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. — MR. ADAMS' 

SPEECH ON THE CLAIMS OF THE DEPOSIT BANKS. HIS LETTER ON 

BOOKS FOR UNIVERSAL READING. ORATION AT NEWBURYPORT. — • 

SPEECH ON THE RIGHT OF PETITION. — LETTER TO THE MASSACHU- 
SETTS ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETY. ADDRESS TO THE INHABITANTS OF 

HIS DISTRICT. HIS VIEWS AS TO THE APPLICATION OF THE SMITH- 
SONIAN FUND. HIS INTEREST IN THE SCIENCE OF ASTRONOMY. 

LETTER TO THE SECRETARY OF STATE ON AN ASTRONOMICAL OBSEHV- 

ATORY. LETTER ON THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY IN THE DISTRICT 

OF COLUMBIA. RESOLUTIONS FOR THE LIMITING OF HEREDITARY 

SLAVERY. DISCOURSE BEFORE THE NEW YORK HISTORICAL SOCI- 
ETY. ADDRESS ON THE SUB.TECT OF EDUCATION. REMARKS ON 

PHRENOLOGY — ON THE LICENSE LAW OF MASSACHUSETTS. HE ORGAN- 
IZES THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

On the 4th of March, 1837, Martin Van Biiren 
succeeded to the Presidency of the United States. 
The undeviating zeal with which he had supported 
all the plans of Andrew Jackson, especially those for 
dismembering Mexico and annexing Texas to the ' 
Union as a slave state, had proved, to the satisfaction 
of the slaveholders, that reliance might be placed on 
a Northern man to carry into effect Southern policy. 

On the 14th of October ensuing Mr. Adams deliv- 
ered a speech, in the House of Representatives, on a 
bill for " adjusting the remaining claims upon the late 
deposit banks." When this bill was in discussion in 
a committee of the whole house, Mr. Adams asked the 

(268) 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 2C9 

author of it (Mr. Cainbreling, of New York) to what 
banks certain words, which he stated, were intended 
to apply. Cambreling replied that Mr. Adams could 
answer his own interrogatory by reading the bill him- 
self. Mr. Adams then proceeded to state several other 
objections to the terms of the bill, and confessed that 
his faculties of comprehension did not permit him to 
understand its phraseology. Mr. Cambreling rose 
quickly, and remarked that, at so late a period of 
the session, the last working night, he could not 
waste his time in discussing nouns, pronouns, verbs, 
and adverbs, with the gentleman from Massachusetts. 
Mr. Adams replied : " "Well, sir, as language is com- 
posed of nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, when 
they are put together to constitute the law of the land 
the meaning of them may surely be demanded of the 
legislator, and those parts of speech may well be used 
for such a purpose. But, if such explanation be 
impossible, it certainly ought not to be expected that 
this house will consent to pass a law, composed of 
nouns and pronouns, verbs and adverbs, which the 
author of it himself does not understand."* 

" On which," said Mr. Adams, " I took the floor, 
and, in a speech of upwards of two hours, exposed the 
true character of the bill, and of that to which it is 
a supplement, in all their iniquity and fraud. I made 
free use of the computations I had drawn from the 
reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, and minutely 
scrutinized the bill in all its parts, and denounced the 
bargain made in the face of the house by Cambreling 

* JViles' Weekly Register, New Series, vol. iii., pp. 167, 1C8. 



270 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

and the members of the debtor states, procuring their 
votes for the postponement of the bill by promising 
them increased indulgence for their banks. Cam- 
breling, who could not answer me, kept up a con- 
tinual succession of interruptions and calls to order, in 
despite of which I went through, with constant atten- 
tion from the house, and not a mark of impatience, 
except from Cambreling. When I finished, he moved 
to lay the bill aside, and take up the appropriation 
bill, which was done." 

On this subject the editor of the National Register 
remarks : " Mr. Adams' speech upon nouns, pronouns, 
verbs, and adverbs, displays a degree of patient labor 
and research, which must convince both political 
friends and foes that neither time nor circumstances 
have impaired the strength or acuteness of his mind, 
or his zeal in behalf of what he deems to be the inter- 
ests of the people. Familiar as we have been, for a 
series of years, with minute calculations and statis- 
tical details, the most powerful but least prized 
modes of exhibiting results, we have been surprised 
and delighted at the clearness and force with which 
every point is illustrated, and most warmly commend 
the speech to all who wish to understand the questions 
on which it treats."* 

The name thus given, of " A Speech on Nouns and 
Pronouns, Verbs and Adverbs," was assumed by Mr. 
Adams, and adopted as its title. 

On the 22d of June, 1838, Mr. Adams addressed a 
letter to certain young men of Baltimore, who had 

* JViles'' Weekly Register, New Series, vol. iii., p. 161. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 271 

written to him a very respectful letter, asking hU 
advice concerning the books or authors he "would 
recommend. After a general expression of his sense 
of their confidence, and regret of his inability fully to 
recommend any list of books or authors worthy of the 
attention of all, he proceeds to speak of the Bible as 
almost the only book deserving such universal recom- 
mendation, and as the book, of all others, to be read 
at all ages and in all conditions of human life — to be 
read in small portions, one or two chapters every day, 
never to be intermitted unless by some overruling 
necessity. He then enters at large into the advan- 
tages of such a practice, and into the mode of con- 
ducting it, and proceeds to suggest other subsidiary 
studies in history, biography, and poetry, concluding 
with the advice of the serving-man to a young student. 
in Shakspeare — " Study what you most all'ect." * 

On the 4th of July, 1837, Mr. Adams delivered at 
Newburyport, at the request of its inhabitants, an 
oration on the Declaration of Independence, the spirit 
of which may be discerned in the following extract : 

"Our g-overnment is a. complicated machine. We have 
twenty-six states', with governments administered by separate 
legislatures and executive chiefs, and represented by equal 
numbers in the general Senate of the nation. This organiza- 
tion is an anomaly in the history of the Avorld. It is that 
which distinguishes us from all other nations, ancient and mod- 
ern : from the simple monarchies and ropnblics of Europe, 
and from the confederacies which have figured in any age upon 
the face of the globe. The seeds of this complicated machine 
were all sown in the Declaration of Independence ; and their 

* Mies' Weekly Register, New Series, vol. v., p. 219. 



272 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

fruits can never be eradicated but by tlie dissolution of th« 
Union. The calculators of the value of the Union, who would 
palm upon you, in the place of this sublime invention, a mere 
cluster of sovereign, confederated states, do but sow the wind 
to reap the whirlwind. 

" One lamentable evidence of deep degeneracy from the 
spirit of the Declaration of Independence is the countenance 
which has been occasionally given, in various parts of the 
Union, to this doctrine ; but it is consolatory to know that, 
whenever it has been distinctly disclosed to the people, it has 
been rejected by them with pointed reprobation. It has, 
indeed, presented itself in its most malignant form in that 
portion of the Union the civil institutions._of which are most 
infected by the gangrene of slavery. V, The inconsistency of 
the institution of domestic slavery with^ the principles of the 
Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all 
the Southern patriots of the Revolution ; by no one with 
deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author 
of the Declaration himself No insincerity or hypocrisy can 
fairly be laid to their charge. Never, from their lips, was 
heard'^he syllable of attempt to justify the institutioji of slav- 
ery.. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened 
upon them by the unnatural step-mother country ; and they 
saw that, before the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, slavery, in common with every other mode of 
oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from 
the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson 
to his dying day. In the memoir of his life, written at the age 
of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and 
emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they 
vnist hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves. 
' Nothing is more certainly written,' said he, ' in the book of 
fate, than that these people are to be free.' My countrymen ! 
it is written in a better volume than the book of fate ; it is 
written in the laws of Nature and of Nature's God. 

" We are told, indeed, by the learned doctors of the nullifi- 
cation school, that color operates as a forfeiture of the rights 
of human nature : that a dark skin turns a man into a chattel ; 



C' 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 273 

tliat cri^y hair transforms a human being into a fntn-footed 
beast. (The master-priest informs you that slavery is conse- \ 

crated and sanctified by the Holy Scriptures of the OM and 
New Testament: ),hat Ham was the i'ather of Caiman, and all 
his posterity w6re doomed, by his own i'ather, to be hewers 
of wood and drawers of water to the descendants of Slicin 
and Japhet; that the native Americans of African descent are 
the children of Ilam, with the curse of Noah still fastened 
upon them ; and the native Americans of Eui'opean descent 
are children of Japhet, pure Anglo-Saxon blood, born to com- 
mand, and to live by the sweat of another's brow. The mas- 
ter-philosopher teaches you that slavery is no curse, but a 
blessing! that Providence — Providence! — has so ordered it 
that this country should be inhabited by two races of men, — 
one born to wield the scourge, and the other to bear the rec- 
ord of its stripes upon his back ; one to earn, through a toil- 
some life, tlie other's brc.'ad, and to leed him on a bed of roses ; 
that slavery is the guardian and promoter of wisdom and 
virtue ; that the slave, by laboring for another's enjoyment, 
learns disinterestedness and humility ; that the master, nur- 
tured, clothed, and sheltered, by another's toils, learns to be 
generous and grateful to the slave, and sometimes to feel for 
him as a father for his child ; that, released from the necessity 
of supplying his own wants, he acquires opportunity of lei- 
sure to improve his mind, to purify his heart, to cultivate his 
taste ; that he has time on his hands to plunge into the depths 
of philosophy, and to soar to the clear empyrean of seraphic 
morality. The master-statesman — ay, the statesman in the 
land of the Declaration of Independence, in the halls of 
national legislation, with the muse of histor}' recording his 
words as they drop from his lips, with the colossal figure of 
American Liberty leaning on a column entwined with the 
emblem of eternity over his head, with the forms of Washing- 
ton and Lafayette speaking to him from the canvas — turns to 
the image of the father of his country, and, forgetting that the 
last act of his life was to emancipate his slaves, to bolster up 
the cause of slavery says, ' That man was a slaveholder.' 
" My countrymen ! these are the tenets of the modern nul- 
18 



274 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

lification school. Can you wonder that they shrink from the 
light of free discussion — that they skulk from the grasp of 
freedom ai.d of truth ? Is there among you one who hearis 
me, solicitous above all things for the preservation of the 
Union so truly dear to us — of that Union proclaimed in the 
Declaration of Independence — of that Union never to be 
divided by any act whatever — and who dreads that the dis- 
cussion of the merits of slavery will endanger the continuance 
of the Union ? Let him discard his terrors, and be assured 
that they are no other than the phantom fears of nullification ; 
that, while doctrines like these are taught in her schools of 
philosophy, preached in her pulpits, and avowed in her legis- 
lative councils, the free, unrestrained discussion of the rights 
and wrongs of slavery, flxr from endangering the Union of 
these states, is the only condition upon which that Union can 
be preserved and perpetuated. What! are you to be told, 
with one breath, that the transcendent glory of this day con- 
sists in the proclamation that all lawful government is founded 
on the inalienable I'ights of man, and, with the next breath, 
that you must not whisper this truth to the winds, lest they 
should taint the atmosphere with freedom, and kindle the 
flame of insurrection ? Are you to bless the earth beneath 
your feet because she spurns the footsteps of a slave, and then 
to choke the utterance of your voice lest the sound of liberty 
shou'd be reechoed from the palmetto-groves, mingled with 
the discordant notes of disunion ? No ! no ! Freedom of 
speech is the only safety-valve which, under the high pressure 
of slavery, can preserve your political boiler from a fearful 
and fatal explosion. Let it be admitted that slavery is an 
institution of internal police, exclusively subject to the sep- 
arate jurisdiction of the states where it is cherished as a bless- 
ing, or tolerated as an evil as yet irremediable. But let that 
slavery which intrenches herself within the walls of her own 
impregnable fortress not sally forth to conquest over the 
domain of freedom. Intrude not beyond the hallowed bounds 
of oppression ; but, if you have by solemn compact doomed 
your ears to hear the distant clanking of the chain, let not the 
fetters of the slave be forged afresh upon your own soil ; far 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 275 

less permit them to be riveted upon your own foot. Quench 
not the spirit of freedom. Let it go forth, not in panoijiy of 
fleshlj'^ wisdom, but with the promise of peace, and the voice 
of persuasion, clad in the whole armor of truth, conquering 
and to conquer." 

In July, 1838, Mr. Adams published a speech " on 
the right of the people, men and women, to petition ; 
on the freedom of speech and debate in the House of 
Representatives of the United States ; on the resolu- 
tions of seven State Legislatures, and on the petitions 
of more than one hundred thousand petitioners, rela- 
tive to the annexation of Texas to this Union;" the 
report of the Committee on Foreign Affairs on these 
subjects being under the consideration of the House. 
In this publication he states and analyzes the course 
of that " conspiracy for the dismemberment of Mexico, 
the re'institution of slavery in the dismembered portion 
of that republic, and the acquisition, by purchase or 
by conquest, of the territory, to sustain, spread, and 
perpetuate, the moral and religious blessing of slavery 
in this Union ;" and which he declares to be in the full 
tide of successful experiment. But a few only of the 
topics illustrated in this publication, which expanded 
into a pamphlet of one hundred and thirty octavo 
pages, can here be touched. It is, in fact, a history 
of the disgraceful proceedings by which that conspir- 
acy effected its purpose. 

Mr. Adams inquired of the committee whether they 
had given as much as five minutes' consideration to the 
resolutions of the Legislatures, and the very numerous 
petitions of individuals, which had been referred tc 



276 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

them. One of the committee, Hugh S. Lcgare, of 
South Carolina, answered, he had not read the papers, 
nor looked into one of them. Mr. Adams exclaimed, 
" I denounce, in the face of the country, the proceed- 
ing of the committee, in reporting upon papers referred 
to them, without looking into any one of them, as 
utterly incorrect. I assert, as a great general princi- 
ple, that when resolutions from Legislatures of states, 
and petitions from a vast multitude of our fellow- 
citizens, on a subject of deep, vital importance to the 
country, are referred to a committee of this house, if 
that committee make up an opinion without looking 
into such resolutions and memorials, the committee 
betray their trust to their constituents and this house. 
I give this out to the nation." 

A long and exciting debate, lasting from the IGth 
of June to the 7th of July, on the report of the com- 
mittee relatiA'e to the annexation of Texas, ensued ; 
the heat and violence of which were chiefly directed 
upon Mr. Adams. 

X' One of the topics agitated during this debate arose 
( upon a speech of Mr. Ilow^ard, of Maryland. Among 
the petitions against the annexation of Texas were 
many signed by women. On these Mr. Howard said, 
he always felt a regret when petitions thus signed 
were presented to the house, relating to political sub- 
jects. He thought these females could have a suffi- 
cient field for the exercise of their influence in the 
discharge of their duties to their fathers, their hus- 
bands, or their children, cheering the domestic circle, 
and shedding over it the mild radiance of the social 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 277 

virtues, instead of rushing into the fierce struggles of 
political life. He considered it discreditable, not only 
to their particular section of country, but also to the 
national character. 

Mr. Adams immediately entered into a long and 
animated defence of the right of petition by women ; 
in the course of which he asked " whether women, Ty^ 
petitioning this house in favor of suffering and dis- 
tress, perform an office ' discreditable ' to themselves, 
to the section of the country where they reside, and to 
this nation. The gentleman says that women have no 
right to petition Congress on political subjects. Why ? 
Sir, what does the gentleman understand by ' politi- 
cal subjects ' ? Everything in which the house has 
an agency — everything which relates to peace and 
relates to war, or to any other of the great interests 
of society. Are women to have no opinions or actions 
on subjects relating to the general welfare ? Where 
did the gentleman get this principle ? Did he find it 
in sacred history — in the langunge of Miriam the 
prophetess, in one of the noblest and most sublime 
songs of triumph that ever met the human eye or ear ? 
Did the gentleman never hear of Deborah, to whom 
the children of Israel came up for judgment? Has he 
forgotten the deed of Jael, wdio slew the dreaded 
enemy of her country? Has he forgotten Esther, 
who, by HER PETITION, saved her people and her coun- 
try? Sir, I might go through the whole of the sacred 
history of the Jews to the advent of our Saviour, and 
find innumerable examples of women, who not only 
took an active part in the politics of their times, but 



278 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

wlio are held up with honor to posterity for doing so 
Our Saviour himself, while on earth, performed that 
most stupendous miracle, the raising of Lazarus from 
the dead, at the petition of a woman ! To go from 
sacred history to profane, does the gentleman there 
find it ' discreditable ' for women to take any interest 
or any part in political affairs ? In the history of 
Greece, let him read and examine the character of 
Aspasia, in a country in which the character and con- 
duct of women were more restricted than in any mod- 
ern nation, save among the Turks. Has he forgotten 
that Spartan mother, who said to her son, when going 
out to battle, ' My son, come back to me with thy 
shield, or upon thy shield ' ? Does he not remember 
Cloelia and her hundred companions, who swam across 
the river, under a shower of darts, escaping from Por- 
senna ? Has he forgotten Cornelia, the mother of the 
Gracchi, who declared that her children were her jew- 
els ? And why ? Because they were the champions 
of freedom. Does he not remember Portia, the wife 
of Brutus and daughter of Cato, and in what terms 
she is represented in the history of Rome ? Has he 
not read of Arria, who, under imperial despotism, 
when her husband was condemned to die by a tyrant, 
plunged the sword into her own bosom, and, handing 
it to her husband, said, ' Take it, Psetus, it does not 
hurt,' and expired? 

" To come to a later period, — what says the his- 
tory of our Anglo-Saxon ancestors ? To say nothing 
of Boadicea, the British heroine in the time of the 
CiBsars, what name is naore illustrious than that of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 270 

Elizabeth? Or, if he will go to the Continent, will 
he not find the names of Maria Theresa of Hungary, 
the two Catharines of Russia, and of Isabella of Cas- 
tile, the patroness of Columbus, the discoverer in 
substance of this hemisphere, for without her that dis- 
covery would not have been made ? Did she bring 
'discredit' on her sex by mingling in politics? To 
come nearer home, — what were the women of the 
United States in the struggle of the Revolution ? Or 
what would the men have been but for the influence 
of the women of that day ? Were they devoted ex- 
clusivelij to the duties and enjoyments of the fire- 
side? Take, for example, the ladies of Philadelphia." 

Mr. Adams here read a long extract from Judge 
Johnson's life of General Greene, relating that during 
the Revolutionary War a call came from General 
Washington stating that the troops were destitute of 
shirts, and of many indispensable articles of clothing. 
"And from whence," writes Judge Johnson, "did 
relief arrive, at last? From the heart where patriot- 
ism erects her favorite shrine, and from the hand 
which is seldom withdrawn when the soldier solicits. 
The ladies of Philadelphia immortalized themselves by 
commencing the generous work, and it was a work too 
grateful to the American fair not to be followed up 
with zeal and alacrity." 

Mr. Adams then read a long quotation from Dr. 
Ramsay's history of South Carolina, " which speaks," 
said he, " trumpet-tongued, of the daring and in- 
trepid spirit of patriotism burning in the bosoms of 
the ladies of that state." After reading an extract 



280 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

from this history, Mr. Adams thus comments upon 
it: "Politics, sir! 'rushing into the vortex of poli- 
tics ! ' — glorying in being called rebel ladies ; refusing 
to attend balls and entertainments, but crowding to 
the prison-ships ! Mark this, and remember it was 
done with no small danger to their own persons, and 
to the safety of their families. But it manifested 
the spirit by which they were animated ; and, sir, is 
that spirit to be charged here, in this hall where we 
are sitting, as being ' discreditable ' to our country's 
name ? Shall it be said that such conduct was a 
national reproach, because it was the conduct of 
women who left ' their domestic concerns, and rushed 
into the vortex of politics ' ? Sir, these women did 
more; they petitioned — yes, they petitioned — and 
that in a matter of politics. It was for the life of 
Hai/ne." 

In connection with this eloquent defence of the 
right of women to interfere in politics, of which the 
above exti'acts are but an outline, Mr. Adams thus 
applies the result to the particular subject of contro- 
versy : 

"The broad principle is morally xvrong, vicious, and the very 
reverse of that which ought to prevail. Why does it follow 
that women are fitted for nothing but the cares of domestic 
life : for bearing children, and cooking the food of a family ; 
devoting all their time to the domestic circle, — to promoting 
the immediate personal comfort of their husbands, brothers, 
and sons ? Observe, sir, the point of departure between the 
chairman of the committee and myself. I admit that it is their 
duty to attend to these things. I subscribe fully to the ele- 
gant compliment passed by him upon those members of the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 281 

female sex wlio devote their time to these duties. But I say 
that the correct principle is tliat women are not only justified, 
but exhibit the most exalted virtue, when they do depart from 
the domestic circle, and enter on the concerns of their coun- 
try, of humanity, and of their God. The mere departure of 
woman from tlie duties of the domestic circle, far from being 
a reproach to her, is a virtue of the highest order, when it is 
done from purity of motive, by appropriate means, and towards 
a virtuous purpose. There is the true distinction. The motive 
must be pure, the means appropriate, and the purpose good ; 
and I say that woman, by the discharge of such duties, has 
manifested a virtue which is even above the virtues of man- 
kind, and approaches to a superior nature. That is the prin- 
ciple I maintain, and which the chairman of the committee has 
to refute, if he applies the position he has taken to the moth* 
ers, the sisters, and the daughters, of the men of my district 
who voted to send me here. Now, I aver further, that, in the 
instance to which his observation refers, namel}'', in the act of 
petitioning against the annexation of Texas to this Union, the 
motive was pure, the means appropriate, and the purpose vir- 
tuous, in the highest degree. As an evident proof of this, I 
recur to the particular petition from which this debate took its 
rise, namely, to the first petition I presented here against the 
annexation — a petition consisting of three lines, and signed 
by two hundred and thirty-eight women of Pljanouth, a prin- 
cipal town in my own district. Their words are : 

"'The undersigned, women of Plymouth (Mass.), thor- 
oughly aware of the sinfulness of slavery, and the consequent 
impolicy and disastrous tendency of its extension in our coun- 
try, do most respectfully remonstrate, with all our souls, 
against the annexation of Texas to the United States as a 
slaveholding territory.' 

" These are the words of their memorial ; and I say that, in 
presenting it here, their motive was pure, and of the highest 
order of purity. They petitioned under a conviction that the 
consequence of the annexation would be the advancement of 
that which is sin in the sight of God, namely, slavery. I say, 
further, that the means were appropriate, because it is Cou- 



282 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

gress who must decide on the question ; and therefore it is 
proper that they should petition Congress, if they wish to 
prevent the annexation. And I say, in the third place, that 
the end was virtuous, pure, and of the most exalted charac- 
ter, namely, to prevent the perpetuation and spread of slavery 
throughout America. I say, moreover, that I subscribe, in 
my own person, to every word the petition contains. I do 
believe slavery to be a sin before God ; and that is the reason, 
and the only insurmountable reason, why we should refuse to 
annex Texas to this Union." 

On the 28th July, 1838, to an invitation from the 
Massachusetts Anti- Slavery Society to attend their 
celebration of the anniversary of the day upon which 
slavery was abolished in the colonial possessions of 
Great Britain, Mr. Adams responded : 

" It would give me pleasure to comply with this invitation ; 
but my health is not very firm. My voice has been aftected 
by the intense heat of the season ; and a multiplicity of appli- 
cations, from societies political and literary, to attend and 
address their meetings, have imposed upon me the necessity 
of pleading the privilege of my years, and declining them all. 

" I rejoice that the defence of the cause of human freedom 
is falling into younger and more vigorous hands. That, in 
three-score years from the day of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, its self-evident truths should be yet struggling for 
existence against the degeneracy of an age pampered with 
prosperity, and languishing into servitude, is a melancholy 
truth, from which I should in vain attempt to shut my eyes. 
But the summons has gone forth. The j'outhful champions of 
the rights of human nature have buckled and are buckling on 
their armor ; and the scourging overseer, and the lynching 
lawyer, and the servile sophist, and the faithless scribe, and 
the priestly parasite, will vanish before them like Satan 
touched by the spear of Ithuriel. I live in the faith and hope 
of the progressive advancement of Christian liberty, and 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 283 

expect to abide by the same in death. You have a glorious 
though arduous career before you ; and it is among the conso- 
lations of my last days that I am able to cheer you in the 
pursuit, and exhort you to be steadfast and immovable iu it. 
So shall you uot fail, whatever may betide, to reap a rich 
reward in the blessing of him that is ready to perish, upon 
your soul." 

In August, 1838, Mr. Adams addressed a letter 
to the inhabitants of his district, in which, after stat- 
ing what had been done on the same subject by the 
Legishiture of Massachusetts and other states, he pro- 
ceeded to recapitulate the WTongs which had been 
done to the colored races of Africa on this conti- 
nent, " which have indeed been of long standing, but 
which in these latter days have been aggravated 
beyond all measure. To repair the injustice of our 
fathers to these races had been, from the day of the 
Declaration of Independence, the conscience of the 
good and the counsel of the wise rulers of the land. 
Washington, by his own example in the testamentary 
disposal of his property, — Jefferson, by the unhesi- 
tating convictions of his own mind, by unanswerable 
argument and eloquent persuasion, addressed almost 
incessantly, throughout a long life, to the reason and 
feelings of his countrymen, — had done homage to the 
self-evident principles which the nation, at her birth, 
had been the first to proclaim. Emancipation, uni- 
versal emancipation, was the lesson they had urged 
on their contemporaries, and held forth as transcend- 
ent and irremissible duties to their children of the 
present age. Instead of which, what have we seen? 



284 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCT ADAMS. 

Communities of slaveholding braggarts, setting at 
defiance the laws of nature and nature's God, restor- 
ing slavery where it had been extinguished, and vainly 
dreaming to make it eternal ; forming, in the sacred 
name of liberty, constitutions of government inter- 
dicting to the legislative authority itself that most 
blessed of human powers, the power of giving lib- 
erty to the slave ! Governors of states urging upon 
their Legislatures to make the exercise of the freedom 
of speech to propagate the right of the slave to free- 
dom felony, without benefit of clergy ! Ministers of 
the gospel, like the priest in the parable of the Good 
Samaritan, coming and looking at the bleeding vic- 
tim of the highway robber, and passing on the other 
side ; or, baser still, perverting the pages of the 
sacred volume to turn into a code of slavery the very 
word of God ! Philosophers, like the Sophists of 
ancient Greece, pulverized by the sober sense of Soc- 
rates, elaborating theories of moral slavery from the 
alembic of a sugar plantation, and vaporing about lofty 
sentiments and generous benevolence to be learnt from 
the hereditary bondage of man to man ! Infuriated 
mobs, murdering the peaceful ministers of Christ for 
the purpose of extinguishing the light of a printing- 
press, and burning with unhallowed fire the hall of 
freedom, the orphan's school, and the church devoted 
to the worship of God ! And, last of all, both houses 
of Congress turning a deaf ear to hundreds of thousands 
of petitioners, and quibbling away their duty to read, 
to listen, and consider, in doubtful disputations 
whether they shall receive, or, receiving, refuse to 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. . 2S^> 

read or hear, the complaints and prayers of their 
fellow-citizens and fellow-men ! " 

Mr. Adams proceeds, in a like spirit of eloquent 
plainness, to denounce the violation of that beneficent 
change which both Washington and Jefferson had de- 
vised for the red man of the forest, and had assured to 
him by solemn treaties pledging the faith of the nation, 
and by laws interdicting by severe penalties the intru- 
sion of the white man on his domain. " In contempt 
of those treaties," said he, "and in defiance of those 
laws, the sovereign State of Georgia had extended her 
jurisdiction over these Indian lands, and lavished, in 
lottery-tickets to her people, the growing harvests, the 
cultivated fields, and furnished dwellings, of the Cher- 
okee, setting at naught the solemn adjudication of the 
Supreme Court of the United States, pronouncing this 
licensed robbery alike lawless and unconstitutional." 
He then proceeds, in a strain of severe animadversion, 
to reprobate the conduct of the Executive administra- 
tion, in " truckling to these usurpations of Georgia ;" 
and reviews that of Congress, in refusing "the peti- 
tions of fifteen thousand of these cheated and plun- 
dered people," when thousands of our own citizens 
joined in their supplications. 

In this letter Mr, Adams states and explains the 
origin of the treaty of peace and alliance between 
Southern nullification and Northern pro-slavery, and 
the nature and consequences of that alliance. In the 
course of his illustrations on this subject he repels, 
with an irresistible power of argument, the attempt 
of the slaveholder to sow the seeds of discord among 



\ 



2SG MEMOIR OF JOnN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the freemen of the North. "The condition of mas- 
ter and slave is," he considered, "by the laws of 
nature and of God, a state of perpetual, inextinguish- 
able war. The slaveholder, deeply conscious of this, 
soothes his soul by sophistical reasonings into a belief 
that this same war still exists in free communities 
between the capitalist and free labor." The fallacy 
and falsehood of this theory he analyzes and exposes, 
and proceeds to state and reason upon various meas- 
ures of Congress connected with these tojDics, at great 
length, and with laborious elucidation.* 

On the 27th of October, 1838, Mr. Adams addressed 
a letter to the district he represented in Congress, in 
which he touched on those points of national policy 
which most deeply affected his mind. Among many 
remarks worthy of anxious thought, which subsequent 
events have confirmed and are confirming, he traces 
the " smothering for nearly three years, in legislative 
halls, the right of petition and freedom of debate," 
to the influence of slavery, " which shrinks, and will 
shrink, from the eye of day. Northern subserviency 
to Southern dictation is the price paid by a Northern 
administration for Southern support. The people of 
the North still support by their suffrages the men who 
have truckled to Southern domination. I believe it 
impossible that this total subversion of every principle 
of liberty should be much longer submitted to by the 
people of the free states of this Union. But their 
fate is in their own hands. If they choose to be rep 

* For this letter see JViles' Weekly Register, New Series, vol. v., p. 56. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 287 

resented by slaves, they will find servility enough to 
represent and betray them. ^The suspension of the 1 
right of petition, the suppression of the freedom of 
debate, the thirst for the annexation of Texas, the 
war-whoop of two successive Presidents against Mex- 
ico, are all but varied symptoms of a deadly disease 
seated in the marrow of our bones, and that deadly 
disease is slavery." 

When, in the latter part of June, 1838, news of 
the success of My. Rush in obtaining tlie Smithsonian 
bequest, and information that he had ah'eady received 
on account of it more than half a million of dollars, 
were announced to the public, Mr. Adams lost no time 
in endeavoring to give a right direction to the govern- 
ment on the subject. He immediately waited upon 
the President of the United States, and, in a conver- 
sation of two hours, explained the views he entertained 
in regard to the application of that fund, and entreated 
him to have a plan prepared, to recommend to Con- 
gress, for tlie foundation of the institution, at the 
commencement of the next session. / " I suggested to 
-ImiL," said Mr. Adams, "the establishment of an 
Astronomical Observatory, with a salary for an astron- 
omer and assistant, for nightly observations and peri- 
odical publications ; annual courses of lectures upon 
the natural, moral, and political sciences. Above all, 
no jobbing, no sinecure, no monkish stalls for lazy 
idlers. I urged the deep responsibility of the nation 
to the world and to all posterity worthily to fulfil the 
great object of the testator. I only lamented my ina- 
bility to communicate half the solicitude with which 



288 MEMOIR OP JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

my heart is on tliis subject full, and the sluggishness 
with which I failed properly to pursue it." "Mr. Van 
Buren," Mr. Adams added, "received all this with 
complacency and apparent concurrence of opinion, 
seemed favorably disposed to my views and willing to 
do right, and asked me to name any person whom I 
thought might be usefully consulted." . 

The phenomena of the heavens were constantly 
observed and often recorded by Mr. Adams. Thus, 
on the 3d of October, 1838, he writes : " As the 
clock struck five this morning, I saw the planets Venus 
and Mercury in conjunction, Mercury being about two 
thirds of a sun's disk below and northward of Venus. 
Three quarters of an hour later Mercury was barely 
perceptible, and five minutes after could not be traced 
by my naked eye, Venus being for ten minutes longer 
visible. I ascertained, therefore, that, in the clear 
sky of this latitude, Mercury, at his greatest elonga- 
tion from the sun, may be seen by a very imperfect 
naked eye, in the morning twiliglit, for the space of 
one hour. I observed, also, the rapidity of his move- 
ments, by the diminished distance between these plan- 
ets since the day before yesterday." 

In the following November he again writes : " To 
make observations on the movements of the heavenly 
bodies has been, for a great portion of my life, a 
pleasure of gratified curiosity, of ever-returning won- 
der, and of reverence for the great Creator and Mover 
of these innumerable worlds. There is something of 
awful enjoyment in observing the rising and the setting 
of the sun. That flashing beam of his first appearing 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 289 

npon the horizon ; that sinking of the last ray beneath 
it; that perpetual revolution of the Great and Little 
Bear around the pole ; that rising of the whole eon- 
stellation of Orion from the horizon to the perpendic- 
ular position, and his ride through the heavens witli 
his belt, his nebulous sword, and his four corner stars 
of the first magnitude, are sources of delight which 
never tire. Even the optical delusion, by which the 
motion of the earth from west to east appears to the 
eye as the movement of the whole firmament from east 
to west, swells the conception of magnificence to the 
incomprehensible infinite." 

/ When one of his friends expressed a hope that we 
should hereafter know more of the brilliant stars 
around us, Mr. Adams replied : "I trust so. I can- 
not conceive of a world where the stars are not visi- 
ble, and, if there is one, I trust I shall never be sent 
to it. Nothing conveys to my mind the idea of eter- 
nity so forcibly as the grand spectacle of the heavens 
in a clear night." 

To a letter addressed to him by the Secretary of 
State, by direction of the President, requesting him 
to communicate the result of his reflections on the 
Smithsonian Institution, Mr. Adams made the follow- 
ing reply : 

"QuiNCY, October 11, 1838. 
" Sir : I have reserved for a separate letter what I proposed 
to say in recommending the erection and establishment of an 
Astronomical Observatory at Washington, as one and the first 
application of the annual income from the Smithsonian be- 
quest, because that, of all that I have to say, I deem it by far 
♦he most important ; and because, having for many years 



290 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

believed that the national character of our country demanded 
of us the establishment of such an institution as a debt of 
honor to the cause of science and to the world of civilized 
man, I have hailed witli cheering hope this opportunity of 
removing tlie greatest obstacle which has hitherto disap- 
pointed the earnest wishes that I have entertained of witness- 
ing, before my own departure for another world, now near at 
hand, the disappearance of a stain upon our good name, in the 
neglect to provide the means of increasing and diffusing 
knowledge among men, by a systematic and scientific contin- 
ued series of observations on the phenomena of the numberless 
worlds suspended over our heads — the sublimest of physical 
sciences, and that in which the field of future discovery is as 
unbounded as the universe itself I allude to the continued 
and necessary expense of such an establishment. 

"In my former letter I proposed that, to preserve entire 
and unimpaired the Smithsonian fund, as the principal of a 
perpetual annuity, the annual appropriations from its proceeds 
should be strictly confined to its annual income ; that, assum- 
ing the amount of the fund to be five hundred thousand dol- 
lars, it should be so invested as to secure a permanent yearly 
income of thirty thousand ; and that it should be committed 
to an incorporated board of trustees, with a secretary and 
treasurer, the only person of the board to receive a pecuniary 
compensation from the fund." 

Mr. Adams then refers to a report made by C. F. 
Mercer, chairman of a committee of the House of 
Eepresentatives, on the 18th of March, 1826 (during 
his o^vn administration), relative to the expenses of an 
Observatory, for much valuable information, and thus 
proceeds : 

" But, as it is desirable that the principal building, the 
Observatory itself, should be, for the purposes of observation, 
unsurpassed by any other edifice constructed for the same 



MEMOIll OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 291 

purposes, I would devote one year's interest from flic fund to 
the construction of the buikiings ; a second and a tliird to 
constitute a fund, from the income of which the salaries of tht 
astronomer, his assistants and attendants, should be paid ; a 
fourth and fifth for the necessary instruments and books ; ii 
sixth and seventh for a fund, from the income of which the 
expense should be defrayed of publishing the ephemeris of 
observation, and a yearly nautical almanac. These appro- 
priations may be so distributed as to apply a part of the 
appropriation of each year to each of those necessary expend- 
itures ; but for an establishment so complete as may do honor 
in all time alike to the testator and his trustees, the United 
States of America, I cannot reduce my estimate of the neces- 
eary expense below two hundred thousand dollars. 

" My principles for this disposal of funds are these : 

" 1st. That the most complete establishment of an Astro- 
nomical Observatory in the world should be founded by the 
United States of America ; the whole expense of which, both 
its first cost and its perpetual maintenance, should be amply 
provided for, without costing one dollar either to the people 
or to the principal sum of the Smithsonian bequest. 

" 2d. That, by providing from the income alone of the fund a 
supplementary fund, from the interest of which all the salaries 
shall be paid, and all the annual expenses of publication shall 
be defrayed, the fund itself Avould, instead of being impaired, 
accumulate with the lapse of years. 1 do most fervently wish 
that this principle might be made the fundamental law, now 
and hereafter, so far as may be practicable, of all the appro- 
priations of the Smithsonian bequest. 

" 3d. That, by the establishment of an Observatory upon 
the largest and most liberal scale, and providing for the pub- 
lication of a yearly nautical almanac, knowledge will be dis- 
persed among men, the reputation of our country will rise to 
honor and reverence among the civilized nations of tlie earth, 
and our navigators and mariners on every ocean be no longer 
dependent on English or French observers or calculators for 
tables indispensable to conduct their path upon the deep." 



292 MEMOIR OF JOHN QDINCY ADAMS. 

Mr. Adams, about this period, expressed himself 
with deep dissatisfaction at the course pursued by the 
President relative to the Smithsonian bequest, com- 
bining the general expression ^ a disposition to aid 
his views with apparently a total indifference as to the 
expenditure of the money. " The subject," said he, 
" weighs deeply upon my mind. The private inter- 
ests and sordid passions into which that fund has 
already fallen fill me with anxiety and apprehensions 
that it will be squandered upon cormorants, or wasted 
in electioneering bribery. Almost all the heads of 
department are indifferent to its application according 
to the testator's bequest ; distinguished senators open 
or disguised enemies to the establishment of the insti- 
tution in any form. The utter prostration of public 
spirit in the Senate, proved by the selfish project to 
apply it to the establishment of a university ; the 
investment of the whole fund, more than half a mil- 
lion of dollars, in Arkansas and Michigan state stocks ; 
the mean trick of filching ten thousand dollars, last 
winter, to pay for the charges of procuring it, are 
all so utterly discouraging that I despair of effect- 
ing anything for the honor of the country, or even to 
accomplish the purpose of the bequest, the increase 
and diffusion of knowledge among men. .' It is hard 
to toil through life for a great purpose, with a convic- 
tion that it will be in vain ; but possibly seed now 
sown may bring forth some good fruits. In my report, 
in January, 1836, I laid down all the general princi- 
ples on which the fund should have been accepted 
and administered. I was then wholly successful. My 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 203 

bill passed without opposition, and under its provision.= 
the money was procured and deposited in the treas- 
ury in gold. If I cannot prevent the disgrace of the 
country by the failure of the testator's intention, I can 
leave a record to future time of what I have done, and 
what I would have done, to accomplish the great 
design, if executed well. And let not the supplica- 
tion to the Author of Good be wanting." 

In November, 1838, the anti-slavery party made 
the immediate abolition of slavery in the District of 
Columbia a test question, on which Mr. Adams re- 
marked : " This is absurd, because notoriously imprac- 
ticable. The house would refuse to consider the 
question two to one." Writing on the same subject, i 
in December of the same year, "I doubt," said he, 
"if there are five members in the house who would j ^ 
vote to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia at 
this time. The conflict between the principle of lib- 
erty and the fact of slavery is coming gradually to an ] 
issue. Slavery has now the power, and falls into 
convulsions at the approach of freedom. ) That the fall 
of slavery is predetermined in the counciTs~of Omnip- 
otence I cannot doubt. It is a part of the great moral 
improvement in the condition of man attested by all 
the records of history. But the conflict will be ter- 
rible, and the progress of improvement retrograde, 
before its final progress to consummation." \ 

In January, 1839, Mr. Adams, in presenting a large 
number of petitions for the abolition of slavery, asked 
leave to explain to the house his reasons for the course 
he had adopted in relation to petitions of this charac- 



294 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

ter. He asked' it as a courtesy. lie had received a 

mass of letters threatenino; him with assassination for 

^ . . . 

this course. ^' His real position was not understood by 

his country. The house having granted the leave, he 
proceeded to state that, although he had zealously 
advocated the right to petition for the abolition of 
slavery in the District of Columbia, he was not him- 
self then prepared to grant their prayer ; that, if the 
question should be presented at once, he should vote 
against it. He knew not what change might be pro- 
duced on his mind by a full and fair discussion, but 
he had not yet seen any reason to change his opinion, 
although he had read all that abolitionists them- 
selves had written and published on the subject. He 
then presented the petitions, and moved appropriate 
resolutions. \ 

On the 21st of February, 1839, Mr. Adams pre- 
sented to the house several resolutions, proposing, in 
the form prescribed by the constitution of the United 
States, 1st. That after the 4th day of July, 1842, 
there shall be no hereditary slavery in the United 
States, and that every child born on and after that 
day, within the United States and their territories, 
shall be born free. 2d. That, with exception of Flor- 
ida, there shall henceforth never be admitted into this 
Union any state the constitution of which shall tol- 
erate within the same the existence of slavery. 3d 
That from and after the 4th of July, 1848, there, 
shall be neither slavery nor slave-trade at the seat of 
government of the United States. 

Mr. Adams proceeded to state that he had in his 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 205 

possession a paper, which he desired to present, and 
on which these resolutions were founded. It was a 
petition I'rom John Jay, and forty-three most respect- 
able citizens of the city of New York. Being here 
interrupted by violent cries of "Order! " he at that 
time refrained from farther pressing the subject. 

On the 30th of April, 1839, Mr. Adams delivered 
before the Historical Society of New York a discourse 
entitled " The Jubilee of the Constitution ; " it being 
the fiftieth year after the inauguration of George 
Washington as President of the United States. Of 
all his occasional productions, this was, probably, the 
most labored. In it he traces the history of the con- 
stitution of tlie United States from the period ante- 
cedent to the American Revolution, through the events 
of that war, to the circumstances wdiich led to its 
adoption, concluding with a solemn admonition to 
adhere to the principles of the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, practically interwoven into the constitution 
of the United States. 

In October, 1839, in an address to the inhabitants 
of Braintree, of which "Education" was the topic, 
he traces that of New England to the Christian 
religion, of which the Bible was the text-book and 
foundation, and the revelation of eternal life. lie 
then illustrated the history of that religion by reca- 
pitulating the difficulties it had to encounter through 
ages of persecution ; commented upon the ecclesiasti- 
cal hierarchy established under Constantino, and the 
abuses arising from the policy of the Church of Rome, 
until their final exposure by Martin Luther, out of 



296 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

which emanated the Protestant faith. The display of 
learning, the power of reasoning, and the suggestive 
thoughts, in this occasional essay, exhibit the extent 
and depth of his studies of the sacred volume, to 
which, more than to any other, the strength of his 
mind had been devoted. 

About this time was published in the newspapers a 
letter from Mr. Adams to Dr. Thomas Sewall, concern- 
ing his two letters on Phrenology, and giving his own 
opinion on that subject in the following characteristic 
language : "I have never been able to persuade my- 
self to think of the science of Phrenology as a serious 
speculation. I have classed it with judicial astrology, 
with alchemy, and with augury ; and, as Cicero says 
he wonders how two Roman augurs could have looked 
each other in the face without laughing, I have felt 
something of the same surprise that two learned phre- 
nologists can meet without like temptation. But, 
as it has been said of Bishop Berkeley's anti-material 
system, that he has demonstrated, beyond the possi- 
bility of refutation, what no man in his senses can 
believe, so, without your assistance, I should never 
have been able to encounter the system of thirty-three 
or thirty-five faculties of the immortal soul all clus- 
tered on the blind side of the head. I thank you for 
furnishing me with argument to meet the doctors who 
pack up the five senses in thirty-five parcels of the 
brain. I hope your lectures will be successful in 
recalling the sober sense of the material philosophers 
to the dignity of an imperishable mind." 

With an urgent request, contained in a letter dated 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 297 

the 28th of June, 1839, for his opinion on the constitu- 
tionality and expediency of the hiw, then recently 
sanctioned by two Legislatures of Massachusetts, 
called the license law, Mr. Adams declined comply- 
ing, for reasons stated at length. He regarded the 
purpose of the law as "in the highest degree pure, 
patriotic, and benevolent." It had, however, given 
rise to two evils, which were already manifested. 
"The first, a spirit of concerted and determined 
resistance to its execution. The second, a concerted 
effort to turn the dissatisfaction of the people with the 
law into a political engine against the administration 
of the state. There is no duty more impressive upon 
the Legislature than that of accommodating the exer- 
cise of its power to the spirit of those over whom it is 
to operate. Abstract right, deserving as it is of the 
profound reverence of every ruler over men, is yet not 
the principle which must guide and govern his con- 
duct ; and wdioever undertakes to make it exclusively 
his guide will soon find in the community a resistance 
that will overrule him and his principles. The Su- 
preme Ruler of the universe declares himself, in the 
holy Scriptures, that, in dealing with the prevarica- 
tions of his chosen people, he sometimes gave them 
statutes which were not good.'' 

On the 2d December, 1839, at the opening of the 
Twenty-Sixth Congress, the clerk began to call the 
roll of the members, according to custom. When 
he came to New Jersey, he stated that five seats of 
the members from that state were contested, and that, 
not feeling himself authorized to decide the question, 



298 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

he should pass over those names, and proceed with the 
call. This gave rise to a general and violent debate 
on the steps to be pursued under such circumstances. 
It was declared by Mr. Adams that the proceeding of 
the clerk was evidently preconcerted to exclude the 
five members from New Jersey from voting at the 
organization of the house. Innumerable questions 
were raised, but the house could not agree upon the 
mode of proceeding, and from the 2d to the 5th it 
remained in a perfectly disorganized state, and in 
apparently iifextricable confusion. The remainder of 
the scene is thus described, in the newspapers, by one 
apparently an eye-witness : 

" Mr. Adams, from the opening of this scene of confusion 
and anarchy, had maintained a profound silence. He appeared 
to be engaged most of the time in writing. To a common 
observer he seemed to be reckless of everything around him. 
But nothing, not the slightest incident, escaped him. 

" The fourth day of the struggle had now commenced. Mr. 
Hugh A. Garland, the clerk, was directed to call the roll again. 
He commenced with Maine, as usual in those days, and was 
proceeding towards Massachusetts. I turned and saw that 
Mr. Adams was ready to get the floor at the earliest moment 
possible. His eye was riveted on the clerk, his hands clasped 
the front edge of his desk, where he always placed them to 
assist him in rising. He looked, in the language of Otway, 
like a ' fowler eager for his prey.' 

"'New Jersey 1' ejaculated Mr. Hugh Garland, 'and — ' 

" Mr. Adams immediately sprang to the floor. 

" ' I rise to interrupt the clerk,' was his first exclamation. 

"'Silence! Silence!' resounded through the hall. 'Hear 
him I Hear him ! Hear what he has to say ! Hear John 
Quincy Adams ! ' was vociferated on all sides. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 299 

" In an instant the most profound stillness reigned through- 
Dut the hall, — you might have heard a leaf of paper fall in 
any part of it, — and every eye was riveted on the venerable 
Nestor of Massachusetts — the purest of statesmen, and the 
noblest of men I He paused for a moment, and, having given 
Mr. Garland a withering look, he proceeded to address the 
multitude. 

" ' It was not my intention/ said he, ' to take any part in 
these extraordinary proceedings. I had hoped this house 
would succeed in organizing itself; that a speaker and clerk 
would be elected, and that the ordinary business of legislation 
would be progressed in. This is not the time or place to dis- 
cuss the merits of conflicting claimants from New Jersey. 
That subject belongs to the House of Representatives, which, 
by the constitution, is made the ultimate arbiter of the qualifi- 
cations of its members. But what a spectacle we here pre- 
sent ! We degrade and disgrace our constituents and the 
country. We do not and cannot organize ; and why ? Be- 
cause the clerk of this house — the mere clerk, whom we cre- 
ate, whom we employ, and whose existence depends upon our 
will — usurps the throne, and sets us, the representatives, the 
vicegerents of the whole American people, at defiance, and 
holds us in contempt! And what is this clerk of yours? Is 
he to suspend, by his mere negative, the functions of govern- 
ment, and put an end to this Congress ? He refuses to call 
the roll 1 It is in your power to compel him to call it, if he 
will not do it voluntarily.' [Here he was interrupted by a 
member, who said that he was authorized to say that compul- 
sion could not reach the clerk, who had avowed that he would 
resign ratfier than call the State of New Jersey.] ' Well, sir, 
let him resign,' continued Mr. Adams, ' and we may possibly 
discover some way by which w^e can get along without the aid 
of his all-powerful talent, learning, and genius ! 

" 'If we cannot organize in any other way, — if this clerk 
of yours will not consent to our discharging the trust confided 
to us by our constituents, — then let us imitate the example 
of the Virginia House of Burgesses, which, when the colonial 



300 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Governor Dinwiddie ordered it to disperse, reftised to obey the 
imperious and insulting' mandate, and, like men — ' 

"The multitude could not contain or repress their enthu- 
siasm any longer, but saluted the eloquent and indignant 
speaker, and interrupted him with loud and deafening cheers, 
which seemed to shake the capitol to its centre. The very 
genii of applause and enthusiasm seemed to float in the atmos- 
phere of the hall, and every heart expanded with an indescrib- 
able feeling of pride and exultation. The turmoil, the darkness, 
the very 'chaos of anarchy,' which had for three successive 
days pervaded the American Congress, was dispelled by the 
magic, the talismanic eloquence, of a single man ; and once 
more the wheels of government and legislation were put in 
motion. 

"Having, by this powerful appeal, brought the yet unor- 
ganized assembly to a perception of its hazardous position, he 
submitted a motion requiring the acting clerk to call the roll. 
Accordingly Mr. Adams was interrupted by a burst of voices 
demanding, ' How shall the question be put ? ' ' Who will 
put the question ? ' The voice of Mr. Adams was heard above 
the tumult: 'I intend to put the question myself!' That 
word brought order out of chaos. There was the master 
mind. 

" As soon as the multitude had recovered itself, and the 
excitement of irrepressible enthusiasm had abated, Mr. Rich- 
ard Barnwell Rhett, of South Carolina, leaped upon one of the 
desks, waved his hand, and exclaimed : ' I move that the Hon- 
orable John Quincy Adams take the chair of the Speaker of 
the house, and officiate as presiding officer till the house be 
organized by the election of its constitutional officers. As 
many as are agreed to this will say Ay ; those — ' 

"He had not an opportunity to complete the sentence, 
' those who are not agreed will say No ;' for one universal, 
deafening, thundering ay responded to the nomination. 

" Hereupon it was moved and ordered that Lewis Williams, 
of North Carolina, and Richard Barnwell Rhett, conduct John 
Quincy Adams to the chair. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 301 

" Well did Mr. Wise, of Virginia, say : ' Sir, I regard it as • 
the proudest hour of your life ; and if, when you sliuU be gath- ' 
ered to your fothers, I were asked to select the words wliieli, 1 
in my judgment, are best calculated to give at once the char- ( 
acter of the man, I would inscribe upon your tomb this sen- ' 
tence : I will put the question myself.' " 



CHAPTER XI. 

SECOND REPORT ON THE SMITHSONIAN FUND. HIS SPEECH ON A BILL 

FOR INSURING A MORE FAITHFUL EXECUTION OF THE LAWS RELAT- 
ING TO THE COLLECTION OF DUTIES ON IMPORTS. — REMARKS ON 
THE ESTABLISHMENT OF AN EXTENSIVE SERIES OF MAGNETICAL AND 

METEOROLOGICAL OBSERVATIONS ON ITINERANT ELECTIONEERING 

ON ABUSES IN RESPECT OF THE NAVY FUND -^^. THE POLITI- 
CAL INFLUENCES OF THE TIME ON THE ORIGIN AND RESULTS OF 

THE FLORIDA WAR. HIS DENUNCIATION OF DUELLING. — HIS ARGU- 
MENT IN THE SUPREME COURT ON BEHALF OF AFRICANS CAPTURED 
IN THE AMISTAD. 

On the 5th of March, 1840, Mr. Adams, as chair- 
man of the select committee on the Smithsonian be- 
quest, made a report, in which he recapituk^ted all the 
material facts which had previously occurred relative 
to the acceptance of this fund, and entered into the 
motives which prevailed with the former committee as 
to its disposal. It appeared from this report, which was 
accompanied by a publication of all the documents 
connected with the subject up to that period, that the 
fund had been received, and paid into the Treasury, 
and invested in state stocks, and that the President 
now invited the attention of Congress to the obligation 
devolving upon the United States to fulfil the object 
of the bequest. While this message was under con- 
sideration various projects for disposing of the funds 

(302) 



MEMOIPw OF JOHN QUIXCY ADAMS. 303 

had been presented by individuals, in memorials, con- 
cerning which the report states that they generally 
contemplated the establishment of a school, college, 
or university, proposing expenditures absorbing the 
whole in the erection of buildings, and leaving little 
or nothing for the improvement of future ages. " In 
most of these projects," says Mr. Adams, "there 
might be perceived purposes of personal accommoda- 
tion and emolument to the projectors, more adapted to 
the promotion of their own interest than to the increase 
and diffusion of knowledge among men." 

While these memorials and the subject of the dis- 
posal of the whole Smithson fund were before the 
select committee, a resolution came from the Senate 
appointing "a joint committee, consisting of seven 
members of the Senate, and such a number as the 
House of Representatives should appoint, to consider 
the expediency of providing an institution of learning, 
to be established at the city of Washington, for the 
application of the legacy bequeathed by James Smith- 
son, of London, to the United States, in trust for that 
purpose." The House, out of courtesy to the Senate, 
concurred in their resolution, and added on their part 
the members of that of which Mr. Adams was chair- 
man. 

The propositions of the committee on the part of the 
House and that on the part of the Senate were so 
widely at variance, that it was found that no result 
could be obtained in which both committees would 
concur. It was finally agreed that the committee on 
the part of the House should report their project to 



304 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the House for consideration. Mr. Adams, thereupon, 
as chairman, reported a series of resokitions, sub- 
stantially of the following import : That the whole 
Smithson fund should be vested in a corporate body 
of trustees, to remain, under the pledge of the faith 
of the United States, undiminished and unimpaired, 
at an interest yielding annually six per cent., appro- 
priated to the declared purpose of the founder, exclu- 
sively from the interest, and not in any part from the 
principal, — the first appropriation of interest to be 
applied for the erection of an astronomical observa- 
tory, and for the various objects incident to such an 
establishment ; — that the education of youth had not 
for its object the increase and diffusion of knowledge 
among men, but the endowment of individuals with 
knowledge already acquired ; and the Smithson fund 
should not be applied to the purpose of education, or 
to any school, college, university, or institution of 
education. 

The chairman of the committee of the Senate, 
in their behalf, presented counter resolutions, disap- 
proving the application of any part of the funds to 
the establishment of an astronomical observatory, and 
urging the appropriation of them to the establishment 
of a university. The bill prepared by the House is 
presented at large in this report, accompanied with 
the argument in its support, prepared by Mr. Adams 
with a strength and fulness to which no abstract can 
do justice. In this argument he illustrates the rea- 
sons for preserving the principal of the fund unim- 
paired, and confining all expenditures from it to the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 305 

annual interest ; also those which preclude any portion 
of it to be applied to any institution lor education; 
showing, from the peculiar expressions of the testator, 
that it could not have been his intention that the fund 
should be applied in this manner. He then proceeds 
to set forth the reasons why the income of the fund 
should in the first instance be applied to an astronom- 
ical observatory, without intending to exclude any 
branch of human knowledge from its equitable share 
of this benefaction. The importance of this object 
he thus eloquently illustrates : " The express object 
of Mr. Smithson's bequest is the diffusion of knowledge 
among men. It is knowledge, the source of all 
human wisdom, and of all beneficent power; knowl- 
edge, as far transcending the postulated lever of 
Archimedes as the universe transcends this speck of 
earth upon its face ; knowledge, the attribute of 
Omnipotence, of which man alone, in the physical and 
material world, is permitted to anticipate." 

Why astronomical science should be the object to 
which the income of this fund should be first applied 
he thus proceeds to set forth : 

"The express object of an observatory is the increase of 
knowledge by new discovery. The physical relations between 
the firmament of heaven and the globe allotted by the Creator 
of all to be the abode of man are discoverable only by the 
organ of the eye. Many of these relations are indispensable 
to the existence of human life, and perhaps of the earth itself. 
Who, that can conceive the idea of a world without a sun, but 
must connect with it the extinction of light and heat, of all 
animal life, of all vegetation and production, leaving the life- 
less clod of matter to return to the priniitive state of chaos, or 

20 



306 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

to be consumed by elemental fire ? The influence of the moon 
— of the planets, our next-door neighbors of the solar sys- 
tem — of the fixed stars, scattered over the blue expanse in 
multitudes exceeding the power of human computation, and 
at distances of whish imagicition herself can form no distinct 
conception ; — the influence of all these upon the globe which 
we inhabit, and upon the condition of man, its dying and 
deathless inhabitant, is great and mysterious, and, in the 
search for final causes, to a great degree inscrutable to his 
finite and limited faculties. The extent to which they are dis- 
coverable is and must remain unknown ; but, to the vigilance 
of a sleepless eye, to the toil of a tireless hand, and to the 
meditations of a thinking, combining, and analyzing mind, 
secrets are successively revealed, not only of the deepest 
import to the welfare of man in his earthly career, but which 
seem to lift him from the earth to the threshold of his eternal 
abode ; to lead him, blindfold up to the council-chamber of 
Omnipotence, and there, stripping the bandage from his eyes, 
bid him look undazzled at the throne of God. 

" In the history of the human species, so far as it is known 
to us, astronomical observation was one of the first objects of 
pursuit for the acquisition of knowledge. In the first chap- 
ter of the sacred volume we are told that, in the process of 
creation, ' God said. Let there be lights in the firmament of 
the heavens to divide the day from the night ; and let them be 
for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and for years.' By 
the special appointment, then, of the Creator, they were made 
the standards for the measurement of time upon earth. They 
were made for more : not only for seasons, for days, and for 
years, but for signs. Signs of what ? It may be that the 
word, in this passage, has reference to the signs of the Egyp- 
tian zodiac, to mark the succession of solar months ; or it 
may indicate a more latent connection between the heavens 
and the earth, of the nature of judicial astrology. These rela- 
tions are not only apparent to the most superficial observation 
of man, but many of them remain inexhaustible funds of suc- 
cessive discovery, perhaps as long as the continued existence 
of man upon earth. What an unknown world of mind, for 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 307 

example, is yet teeming in the womb of time, to be revealec 
in tracing the causes of the sympathy between the magnet ami 
the pole — that unseen, immaterial spirit, which walks with us 
through the most entangled forests, over the most intermina- 
ble wilderness, and across every region of the pathless deep, 
by day, by night, in the calm serene of a cloudless sky, and 
in the howling of the hurricane or the typhoon ? Who can 
witjness the movements of that tremulous needle, poised upon 
its centre, still tending to the polar star, but obedient to his 
distant hand, armed with a metallic guide, round every point 
of the compass, at the fiat of his will, without feeling a thrill 
of amazement approaching to superstition ? The discovery of 
the attractive power of the magnet was made before the inven- 
tion of the alphabet, or the age of hieroglyphics. No record 
of the event is found upon the annals of human histor3^ Bnt 
seven hundred years have scarcely passed away since its polar- 
ity was first known to the civilized European man. It was by 
observation of the periodical revolution of the earth in her 
orbit round the sun, compared with her daily revolution round 
her axis, that was disclosed the fact that her annual period 
was composed of three hundred and sixty-five of her daily 
revolutions ; or, in other words, that the year was composed 
of three hundred and sixty-five daj's. But the shepherds of 
Egypt, watching their flocks by night, could not but observe 
the movements of the dog-star, next to the sun the most bril- 
liant of the luminaries of heaven. They worshipped that star as 
a god ; and, losing sight of him for about forty days every year, 
during his conjunction with the sun, they watched with intense 
anxiety for his reappearance in the sky, and with that day 
commenced their year. By this practice it failed not soon to 
be found that, although the reappearance of the star for three 
successive years was at the end of three hundred and sixty- 
five daj's, it would, on the fourth year, be delayed one day 
longer ; and, after repeated observation of this phenomenon, 
they added six hours to the computed duration of the year, 
and established the canicular period of four years, consisting 
of one thousand four hundred and sixty-one days. It was not 
until the days of Julius Ca^sar that this computation of time 



308 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

was adopted in the Koman calendar ; and fifteen centuries 
from that time had elapsed before the yearly celebration of 
the Christian paschal festivals, founded upon the Passover of 
the Levitical law, revealed the fact that the annual revolution 
of the earth in her orbit round the sun is not precisely of 
three hundred and sixty-five days and one quarter, but of 
between eleven and twelve minutes less ; and thus the dura- 
tion of the year was ascertained, as a measure of time, to. an 
accuracy of three or four seconds, more or less — a mistake 
which would scarcely amount to one day in twenty thousand 
years. 

"It is, then, to the successive discoveries of persevering 
astronomical observation, through a period of fifty centuries, 
that we are indebted for a fixed and permanent standard for 
the measurement of time. And by the same science has man 
acquired, so far as he possesses it, a standard for the meas- 
urement of space. A standard for the measurement of the 
dimensions and distances of the fixed stars from ourselves is 
yet to be found ; and, if ever found, will be through the means 
of astronomical observation. 

"The influence of all these discoveries upon the condition 
of man is no doubt infinitely diversified in relative importance ; 
but all, even the minutest, contribute to the increase and dif- 
fusion of knowledge. There is no richer field of science opened 
to the exploration of man in search of knowledge than astro- 
nomical observation ; nor is there, in the opinion of this com- 
mittee, any duty more impressively incumbent upon all human 
governments than that of furnishing means, and facilities, and 
rewards, to those Avho devote the labors of their lives to the 
indefatigable industry, the unceasing vigilance, and the bright 
intelligence, indispensable to success in these pursuits." 

These remarks are. succeeded by others on the Royal 
Observatory of Greenwich, on the connection of astron- 
omy with the art of navigation, on the increase of 
observatories in the British Islands, in France, and in 
Russia; and, after repeating the objections to applying 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 309 

the fund of Mr. Smitlison to a scho'ol devoted to anv 
particular branch of science, or for general educafion, 
Mr. Adams, in behalf of the committee, submitted a 
bill for the consideration of the house, embracing the 
principles maintained in his report. 

On May 8th, 1840, a bill to insure a more faithful 
execution of the laws relating to the collection of 
duties on imports being under consideration of the 
house, Mr. Adams, after commenting on the nature 
and injurious consequences of the fraud which it was 
the object of the bill to prevent, said that this prac- 
tice was " a sort of national thing," to such an extent 
were the citizens of Great Britain accustomed to come 
over to this country to cheat us out of our revenue, 
and to defraud our manufacturing interest, and added 

" I have said that there is something national in this matter, 
and I will now proceed to state what, in my judgment, lies at 
the bottom of this proceeding. It is a maxim of British com- 
mercial law that it is lawful for the citizens of one nation to 
defraud the revenues of other nations. The author of the 
maxim was a man famous throughout the civilized world, — a 
man of transcendent talents, who fixed, more, perhaps, ^than 
any other man of the same century, his impress on the age in 
which he lived, and upon the laws of England, — I mean Lord 
Mansfield. In some respects it has been greatly to the advan- 
tage of those laws, but in others as much to their disad- 
vantao^e and discredit, of which the maxim of which I now 
speak is a signal instance. He was the first British judge who 
established the principle that it is a lawful thing for English- 
men to cheat the revenue laws of other nations, especially 
those of Spain and Portugal. 

" This principle was first settled in an act of Parliament, the 
object of which was to suppress what are denominated wager 
policies of insurance — a species of instrument well kuowu to 



310 MEMOIll OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

lawyei'S as gambling- policies, being entered into when the 
party insuring has no interest in the property insured. It had 
been a question whether such policies were lawful by the com- 
mon law. The practice had greatly increased, insomuch that 
wager policies had become a common thing. It was with a 
view to suppress these that the statute of the nineteenth of 
George the Second, chapter thirty-seventh, was passed. The 
object of that statute was good ; it was remedial in its char- 
acter ; it went to suppress a public evil; but, while it prohib- 
ited wager policies in all other cases, it contained an express 
exception in favor of tliose made on vessels trading to Spain and 
Portugal.'' 

After commenting on this act of the British Par- 
liament, he quotes the words of Blackstone, who, 
after stating the nature of these smuggling policies, 
and dwelling upon their immorality and pernicious 
tendency, refers to the law above mentioned, which 
enacts "that they shall be totally null and void, 
except as to policies on privateers in the Spanish and 
Portuguese trade, for reasons sufficiently obvious." 
(2 Blackstone, ch. xxx., p. 4, §1.) On this state- 
ment of Blackstone Mr. Adams remarks : 

"It is an old maxim of the schools that frauds are always 
concealed under generalities. What were these obvious rea- 
sons? Why were they concealed? It is known to the com- 
mittee that, in the celebrated controversy of the man in the 
mask, — I mean Junius with Blackstone, — he said, that for the 
defence of law, of justice, and of truth, let any man consult 
the work of that great judge, his Commentaries upon the laws 
of England ; but, if a man wanted to cheat his neighbor out 
of his estate, he should consult the doctor himself. I go a 
little further than Junius, although I do it with great reluct- 
ance, for I hold the book to be one of the best books in the 
world. I say that the observation of Junius applies to the 



MEMOm OF JOHN QUINCr ADAMS. 311 

book as much as to the judge, when, from reasons like those 
with which scoundrels cover their consciences, that book 
evades telling wlij' the exception was made in regard to Spain 
and Portugal, and what those reasons were which the judge 
declares to be ' sufficiently obvious.' 

" This exception of the British law was infectious ; it spread 
into France, whose government adopted the same provision 
by way of reprisal." 

Mr. Adams then read from Emerigon, the principal 
authority of French lawyers on insurance, who denies 
the principles of the English statute ; and M. Pothier, 
not a mere lawyer, but a philosopher and moralist, 
who protests against this doctrine, and appeals to the 
eternal laws of morality. He then cites the second 
volume Term Reports, p. 164, in which Judge Buller 
states, "I have heard Lord Mansfield say that the 
reason of that allowance was to favor the smuggling 
of bullion from those countries." On which Mr. 
Adams remarks : 

" This is the sum of the whole matter. Judge Buller heard 
Loid Mansfield say that the object of the exception in regard 
to Spain and Portugal was to encourage — yes, to encourage 
— the smuggling trade. The object was that smugglers should 
not only escape the effect of their villany, but should be actu- 
ally encouraged by government in its perpetration. 

" I think I have now established the position which I 
assumed, that the lawfulness of violating the revenue laws 
of other nations is a principle of English law, — a principle 
sanctioned by the Legislature and the judicial courts of Great 
Britain, — but one which the best elementary writers, proceed- 
ing on the great and eternal principles of morality, have con- 
demned as a i\ilse principle ; and I have thought it necessary 
to do this with a view to trace these frauds upon our revenue, 
committed by British subjects, to what I believe to be their 



f> 



12 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



original source in the false morality in the English Parliament 
and English judges. What is the natural effect of the promul- 
gation of such principles by such authority ? What can it be 
but to encourage frauds on the revenue of other nations ? 
When a principle like this goes out, sanctioned with the legis- 
lative authority, it will have its effect on the nation. 

"' Quid leges sine moribiis.' The whole moral principle of 
a nation is contaminated by the legislative authorization and 
judicial sanction of a practice dishonest in itself, which neces- 
sarily includes not merely a permission, but a stimulant, to per- 
jury. If an English merchant, subscribing to this principle, 
goes to establish himself in a foreign country, he goes as an 
enemy, warranted, by the sanction of his own courts and 
Parliament, to do anything that can defraud its revenue. 
Perhaps this may be one of the causes of the vulgar saying, 
— which all must have heard, but which, thank God, I still 
hope is not warranted by the practice of the native merchants 
of our country, — that custom-house oaths have no validity. 
There is a feeling, but too prevalent, which distinguishes 
between custom-house oaths and other oaths. It is obvious 
that smuggling cannot be carried on to any^ extent without the 
commission of perjury. There must be false swearing ; and 
it is that false swearing which the British laws have sanc- 
tioned. None of this bullion, of which Justice Buller speaks, 
could be smuggled out of Spain and Portugal without false 
oaths ; and you will find, from the details of a case which I 
shall presently call to your attention, that false swearing is at 
the bottom of the frauds which this bill seeks to correct — 
frauds in consequence of which seven eighths of all the wool- 
lens imported into New York escaped the payment of the duty 
charged by law. These people do not hold themselves bound 
to respect our revenue laws, and thus proceed without scru- 
ples to the perpetration of perjury in order to carry on with 
success the evasion of them," 

In the conclusion of his speech Mr. Adams paid the 
following tribute to the English nation, saying : 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 313 

"That of the English nation he entertained sentiments of 
the most exalted admiration ; that he was proud of being him- 
self descended from that stock, although two hundred years 
had passed away, during which all his ancestors had been 
natives of this country. He claimed the great men of Eng- 
land of former ages as his countrymen, and could say with 
the poet Cowper, in hearty concurrence with the sentiment, 

that it is 

' Praise enough 

To fill the ambition of a common man, 

That Chatham's language was his mother tongue, 

And Wolfe's great name compatriot with his own.' 

He believed that no nation, of ancient or modern times, was 
more entitled to veneration for its exertion in the cause of 
human improvement than the British. He tliought their code 
of laws admirable ; but, in the discussion of the bill before 
the committee, he had been compelled, in the discharge of his 
duty, to expose one great erroneous principle of morals incor- 
porated into their laws; a principle, the natural and neces- 
sary consequence of which had been the occasion of the bill 
now before the committee ; a principle enacted by the British 
Parliament, and sanctioned by the decision of their highest 
judicial tribunals, with the express and avowed purpose of 
encouraging the subjects of Great Britain to the practice of 
defrauding, even by the commission of perjury, the revenues 
of a foreign country." 

Ill July, 1840, a memorial was presented to Con- 
gress, from the American Philosophical Society of 
Philadelphia, asking the aid of government to carry 
on a series of magnetic and meteorological observa- 
tions. This application was made in cooperation with 
the Royal Society of Great Britain, and at their solic- 
itation, and had for its object an extended system of 
magnetic observations at fixed magnetic observatories 
in different quarters of the globe. Mr. Adams, hav- 



o 



14 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



ing been appointed chairman of a committee on the 
memorial, made a report setting forth at large the 
motives for concurrence, and the importance of the 
object asked for. The following extracts illustrate 
his comprehensive views and appreciation of the sub- 
ject : 

"Among the most powerful, most wonderful, and most 
mystenous agents in the economy of the physical universe, 
is the magnet. Its attractive properties, its perpetual tend- 
ency to the poles of the earth and of the heavens, and its 
exclusive sympathies with one of the mineral productions of 
the earth, have been brought within the scope of human obser- 
vation at diiferent periods of the history of mankind, separated 
by the distance of many centuries from each other. The 
attractive power of the magnet was known in ages of antiquity 
so remote that it transcends even the remembrance of tlie name 
of its first discoverer, and the time of its accession to the mass 
of human knowledge. Its polarity, or, at least, the applica- 
tion of that property to the purposes of navigation beyond the 
sight of land, was unknown in Europe, and probably through- 
out the world, until the twelfth or thirteenth century of the 
Christian era ; and its horizontal variation from the tendency 
directly to the pole was first perceived by Christopher Colum- 
bus, in that transcendent voyage of discovery which gave a 
new hemisphere to the industry and intelligence of civilized 
man ; — an incident then so alarming to him and his company, 
that, but for the inflexible and persevering spirit of this intrepid 
and daring mariner, it would have sunk them into despair, and 
buried the New World for ages upon ages longer from the 
knowledge of the Old. Centuries have again passed away, 
disclosing gradually new properties of the magnet to the 
ardent and eager pursuit of human curiosity, still stimulated 
by constant observation of the phenomena connected with this 
metallic substance, dug from the bowels of the earth, yet seem- 
ing more and more to elude or defy all the ordinary laws of 
matter. Thus, in the process of observation to ascertain the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 315 

horizontal variation of the needle from its polar direction, it 
was found that it differed in intensity in the difl'erent regions 
of the earth and the seas ; that its variations were ailccted 
by difierent causes, some tending in the same direction, alter- 
nately east and west, through a succession of years, of ages, 
even of centuries, and others accomplishing their circle of 
existence from day to day, perhaps from liour to liuur, or at 
stated hours of the day. It was found that there was a per- 
pendicular as well as a horizontal deviation from the polar 
direction ; and it became a matter of anxious inquiry to ascer- 
tain the intensity both of the dip and variation of the needle 
at every spot on the surface of the globe. It was inferred, 
from the different intensities of variation in difierent latitudes, 
that there were magnetic poles not coincident with those of 
the earth ; and the northern of these poles has been recently 
traced to its actual location by the British circumnavigators. 

Parry and Ross. 

" The attractive power, the polarity, the deviations from the 
polar direction, horizontal and perpendicular, the varieties 
even of these deviations, and the detection of the northern 
magnetic pole, have still left materials for further observation, 
and suggested problems for solution to the perseverance and 
ingenuity of the human mind. 

"In the spring of 1836 that illustrious philosopher and 
statesman, Baron Alexander Von Humboldt, addressed to the 
Duke of Sussex, then President of the Royal Society, a letter 
upon the means of perfecting the knowledge of terrestrial 
magnerism, by the establishment of magnetic stations and cor- 
responding observations ; and solicited the powerful concur- 
rence of the Royal Society in favor of the labors then already 
undertaken by a learned association in Germany, and which, 
radiating at once from several great scientific central points in 
Europe, might lead progressively to the more precise knowl- 
edge of the laws of nature." 

Mr. Adams then proceeds to state the subsequent 
proceedings of the Royal Society, and the measures 



316 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the British government had taken to carry into effect 
the views of that society, earnestly recommending 
the compliance with the request of the American 
Philosophical Society, and adds : 

" The committee would hail, with feelings of hope and 
encouragement, the virtual alliance of great and mighty 
nations for this union of efforts in the promotion of the cause 
of science. Long enough have the leagues and federations 
between tiie potentates of the earth been confined to alliances, 
offensive and defensive, to promote purposes of mutual hatred 
and hostility. It is refreshing to the friends of humanity to 
witness the rise and progress of a spirit of common and con- 
certed inquiry into the secrets of material nature, the results 
of* which not only go to accumulate the mass of human knowl- 
edge, but to harmonize in a community of enjoyments the 
varied tribes of man throughout the habitable globe. The 
invitation to participate in these labors, and to acquire the 
credit and reputation of having contributed to the beneficial 
results which may confidently be expected from them, is itself 
creditable to the character of our own country." 

In conclusion, the committee recommend the adop- 
tion of a resolution, which they report, appropriating 
twenty thousand dollars for the establishment of five 
several stations for making observations on terrestrial 
magnetism and meteorology, conformably to the invi- 
tation of the Royal Society of Great Britain to the 
American Philosophical Society of Philadelphia. 

In July, 1840, at the closing of the congressional 
session, Mr. Adams thus expressed his opinion of the 
state of public affairs : " The late session of Congress 
has been painful to me beyond all former experience, 
by the demonstration it has given of degenerating 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 317 

institutions. Parties are falling into profligate fac- 
tions. I have seen this before ; but the worst symp- 
tom now is the change in the manners of the people. 
The continuance of the present administration will, if 
accomplished, open wide all the floodgates of corrup- 
tion. Will a change produce a reform ? Pause and 
ponder ! Slavery, the Indians, the public lands, the 
collection and disbursement of public moneys, the 
tariff, and foreign affairs — what is to become of 
them?" 

In September, 1840, Mr. Adams remarked, on the 
electioneering addresses then made, preparatory to the 
next election of President : " This practice of itiner- 
ant speech-making has suddenly broken out in this 
country to a fearful extent. Electioneering for the 
Presidency has spread its contagion to the President 
himself, to his now only competitor, to his imme- 
diate predecessor, to the candidates Henry Clay and 
Daniel Webster, and to many distinguished meuibers 
of both branches of Congress. The tendency of all 
this is to the corruption of popular elections both by 
violence and fraud." 

Again, in October ensuing: " One of the peculiar- 
ities of the present time is that the principal leaders 
of the political parties are travelling about the country 
from state to state, and holding fortli, like Methodist 
preachers, to assembled multitudes, under the broad 
canopy of heaven. Webster, Clay, W. C. Rives, Silas 
Wright, and James Buchanan, are among the first 
and foremost in this canvassing oratory ; while An- 
drew Jackson, and Martin Van Buren, with his heads 



318 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

of departments, are harping on another string of the 
political accordion, by writing controversial election- 
eering letters. Besides the principal leaders of the 
parties, numerous subaltern officers of the administra- 
tion are summoned to the same service, and, instead 
of attending to the duties of their offices, roam, recite, 
and madden, round the land." 

In a speech made on the 28th of December, 1840, 
Mr. Adams severely denounced the policy pursued by 
the government in respect of the navy pension fund ; 
stating that it amounted to one million two hundred 
thousand dollars ; that, without any authority, it had 
been loaned to different states, and vested in their 
stocks, which, for the most part, were either depre- 
ciated in value, wholly lost, or unsalable. That fund, 
he maintained, was a sacred trust, and proceeded 
to state fully and at large the manner in which it 
had been violated without authority. 

Mr. Adams then went on to state the proceedings of 
the Executive relative to the Smithsonian fund. He 
said that about the 1st of September, 1838, the sum of 
five hundred and nine thousand dollars had been depos- 
ited in the Mint of Philadelphia in gold, — in mint- 
drops ; — a sacred trust, which the United States had 
accepted, on the pledge of their faith to keep it whole, 
entire, for the purpose for which it had been given by 
a foreigner. Within three days the five hundred thou- 
sand dollars were on their way to Arkansas to make a 
bank. The members of the Senate and of the House 
from Arkansas had a quick scent of these moneys 
coming into the Treasury ; and care had been taken 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 319 

to insert into a bill for a very different object a pro- 
vision authorizing the President and Secretary of tlie 
Treasury to loan to the states that sum of money when 
it should come into the Treasury. This was three 
months beforehand ; and three days after the money 
was received the plan was carried into execution. 

" Now, w^e had heard," said Mr. Adams, " of Brit- 
ish gold carrying the elections, which had resulted, 
not in favor of the present incumbent of the presi- 
dential chair, but against him. There he could put 
his finger upon five hundred and nine thousand dol- 
lars of British gold, which contributed, so far as it 
could go, to the election of the present executive 
magistrate ; and he thought he had shown the means 
by which it was done. Go to the State of Arkansas. 
The dollars are not there, but they were there, and 
they were sent there from the Mint of the United 
States. Here was policy — profound policy — econ- 
omy — democracy; and all this accompanied w'ith so 
great a horror at the idea of assuming state debts, that 
the hair of the gentlemen stood on end at the mere 
mention of the possibility of such a thing. Was not 
here a debt of the State of Arkansas of half a million 
of dollars ? Had not the general government assumed 
that debt? Had they not employed trust-money? 
If Arkansas should declare herself insolvent to-morrow, 
Congress must pay that debt ; they had assumed it." 

About this time, Mr. Adams, in some of his writ- 
ings, thus graphically illustrates the political influ- 
ences which have mainly shaped the destinies of the 
United States : "A very curious philosophical history 



320 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

of parties might be made by giving a catalogue rai- 
sonne of the candidates for the Presidency voted foi 
in the electoral colleges since the establishment of the 
constitution of the United States. It would contain 
a history of the influences of the presidential office. 
Would not the retrospect furnish practical principles 
concerning the operation of the constitution? — 1st. 
That the direct and infallible path to the Presidency 
is military service, coupled with demagogue policy. 
2d. That, in the absence of military service, dema- 
gogue policy is the first and most indispensable element 
of success, and the art of party drilling the second. 
3d. That the drill consists in combining the Southern 
interest in domestic slavery with the Northern riotous 
democracy. 4th. That this policy and drill, first 
organized by Thomas Jefferson, accomplished his elec- 
tion, and established the Virginia dynasty of twenty- 
four years ; — a perpetual practical contradiction of its 
own principles. 5th. That the same policy and drill, 
invigorated by success and fortified by experience, 
has now placed Martin Van Buren in the President's 
chair, and disclosed to the unprincipled ambition of 
the North the art of rising upon the principles of the 
South. And 6th. That it has exposed in broad day 
the overruling influence of the institution of domestic 
slavery upon the history and policy of the Union." 

In the case of a contested election Mr. Adams 
remarked : " The conduct of a majority of the House 
has, from beginning to end, been governed by will, 
and not by judgment ; and so I fear it will be always 
in every case of contested elections." 



MEMOIPw OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 321 

"The speech of Horace Everett, of Vermont," (made 
on the 8th June, 183G, on the Indian annuity bill,) said 
Mr. Adams, "gives a perfectly clear and distinct expo- 
sition of the origin and causes of the Florida war, and 
demonstrates, beyond all possibility of being gainsaid, 
that the wrong of the war is on our side. It depresses 
the spirits, and humiliates the soul, that this war is 
now running into its fifth year, has cost thirty millions 
of dollars, has successively baffled and disgraced all 
our chief military generals, — Gaines, Scott, Jesup, 
and Macomb, — and that our last resources now are 
bloodhounds and no quarter. Sixteen millions of 
Anglo-Saxons unable to subdue, in five years, by force 
and by fraud, by secret treachery and by open war, 
sixteen hundred savage warriors ! There is a disre- 
gard of all appearance of right, in our transactions 
with the Indians, which I feel as a cruel disparage- 
ment of the honor of my country." 

On the 1st of January, 1841, ]Mr. Adams, refer- 
ring to the accounts he had received that the attend- 
ance at the Presidential levees wius much smaller than 
usual, and that the visitors were chiefly from among 
the President's old adversaries, the Whigs, remarked : 

" ' Donee erisfelix multos niimerabis amicos 
Tempora sifuerint nubila solus eris.' 

There is, perhaps, no occasion in human affairs," ho 
added, " which more uniformly exemplifies this pro- 
pensity of human nature than the exit of a President 
of the United States from ofiice." 

On the 4th of February, 1841, there arose, inci- 

21 



322 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

dentally, in the House of Representatives, a debate 
upon the act to suppress duelling. Mr. Wise, of Vir- 
ginia, had said, in the course of a former debate : 
" The anti-duelling law is producing its bitter fruits. 
It is making this house a bear-garden. We have an 
example in the present instance. Here, with permis- 
sion of the chair and committee, and without a call to 
order from anybody, we see and hear one member 
(Mr. Johnson) say to another (Mr. Duncan) that he 
had been branded as a coward on this floor. The 
other sa} s back that ' he is a liar ! ' And, sir, there 
the matter will stop. There will be no fight." Be- 
fore proceeding to comment, Mr. Adams called for the 
reading of this statement, as reported in the National 
Intelligencer . On which Mr. Wise said publicly, in the 
house, " That is a correct report."* 

After this acknowledgment, Mr. Adams proceeded 
to remark with severity on this statement and lan- 
guage, occasioning an excitement in the house, par- 
ticularly among the duellists, which belongs to the 
history of the period. After stating that he under- 
stood that statement and language " as maintaining 
that duelling, between members of this house, for 
matters passing within this house, is a practice that 
ought not to be suppressed," he continued : "I main- 
tain the contrary ; and I maintain it for the independ- 
ence of this house, for my own independence, for the 
independence of those with whom I act, for the inde- 
pendence of the members from the Northern section of 

* See, for all the proceedings on this subject, the Congressional Globe, 
vol. IX., pp. 320 — 322. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 323 

this country, avIio not only abhor duelling in thcMtry, 
but in practice ; in conserjuence of which members iVum 
other sections are perpetually insulting them on this 
floor, under the impression that the insult will not be 
resented." 

Here Mr. Campbell, of South Carolina, as the re- 
porter states, called Mr. Adams to order. The chair- 
man said something, of which not a word could be 
heard, the house being in such a state of tempestu- 
ous uproar. When the voice of Mr. Adams again 
caught the ear of the reporter, he was proceeding tis 
follows : 

" Would you smother discussion on the duelling law ? There 
is not a point in the affairs of this nation more important than 
this very practice of duelling, — considered as a point of honor 
in one part of the Union, and a point of infamy in another, — 
with its consequences. I say there is no more important sub- 
ject that can go forth, North and Si)ulh, East and West; and 
I therefore take my issue upon it. I have come here deter- 
mined to do so between the different portions of this house, 
in order to see whether this practice is to be continued ; 
whether the members from that section of the Union whose 
principles are against duelling are to be insulted, upon every 
topic of discussion, because it is supposed that the insult will 
not be resented, and that ' there will be no fight.' 

Mr. Adams here called for the reading of " the act 
to suppress duelling ; " which the clerk having read, 
he proceeded : 

" I was going on to say that the reason why I had brought 
this subject into the discussion is because it is most intimately 
connected with all the transactions in this house and this 
nation; and because I think it time to settle this question 



324 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

between the duellists and non-duellists, whoever they may be. 
I say that, in consequence of my principles, and what I believe 
to be the principles of a very large portion of the people in 
that part of the country from which I came, I will not, as 
regards the approaching administration, put myself under the 
lead of any man who considers the duelling law in this district 
as having borne any bitter fruits whatever. It may not, 
indeed, be sufficiently potent in its operation to prevent the 
thirst for blood which follows offensive words ; but I believe 
it has prevented, and will prevent, any such occurrences as 
we have witnessed here. But, as it bears upon the affairs of 
the nation, I am not willing to sit any longer here, and see 
other members from my own section of the country, or those 
who may be my successors here, made subject to any such 
law as the law of the duellist. I am unwilling that they 
should not have full freedom of speech in this house on all 
occasions — as much so as the primest duellist in the land. I 
do not want to hear perpetual intimations, when a man from 
one part of the country means to insult another coming from 
other parts of the country, as, ' I am ready to answer here or 
elsewhere ; ' and ' The gentleman knows where I am to be 
found;' saying, as the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. W. C. 
Johnson) did just now, that he would call to account any per- 
son who dared make allusion to what had taken place between 
him and another member of this house. I do not intend to 
hear that any more, for myself or others, if I can help it. 
Therefore I move to bring the matter up for full discussion 
here, whether we are to be twitted and taunted with remarks 
that a man is ready to meet us here or elsewhere. It goes to 
the independence of this house ; it goes to the independence 
of every individual member of this house ; it goes to the right 
of speech and freedom of debate in this houge ; and I felt 
myself bound to bear my testimony in the most decided man- 
ner against the practice of duelling, or anything in the shape 
of even a virtual challenge taking place in this house, now 
and forever. If the committee think proper to put me down, 
after a debate of three weeks, involving almost every topic 
under the sun, and in which not one man has been called to 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY AtlAMS. o2o 

order, I must submit. It shall go out In the country, antl I 
am willing that the sober sentiment of the whole nation shall 
be my final judge on this subject." 

Mr. Adams, after having recapitulated hi.s course 
of proceedings on various topics, and explained his 
motives and their relations on former occasions, and 
his present general views on those subjects, closes his 
remarks on duelling by declaring that what he had 
said had been from motives of pure public spirit, with 
no disposition to offend any gentleman, and least of 
all the gentleman from Virginia (^Ir. Wise) ; but 
that he had felt it his duty to say what he had said, 
because he believed that the application of the 
principle of duelling, as regards different portions of 
this house, is such that it must be discarded ; that 
duelling must be considered as a crime, and that it 
must not be countenanced by professions of any neces- 
sity for its existence. 

In January and March, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered 
his celebrated argument before the Supreme Court of 
the United States, in the case of the United States, 
appellants, against Cinque and others, appellees. This 
was afterwards published at length. In it he publicly 
arraigned before that court and the civilized world the 
conduct of the then existing administration, for having, 
in all their proceedings relating to these unfortunate 
Africans, exhibited sympathy for one of the parties, 
and antipathy for the other ; sympathy for the white, 
antipathy to the black ; sympathy for the slaveholders, 
in place of protection for the unfortunate and op- 
pressed. It is impossible by any abstract or outline 



o 



26 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIMCY ADAMS. 



to do justice to the laborious ability with which this 
argument is sustained. The just severity with which 
he scrutinizes the proceedings of the Executive and 
the demands of the Spanish Minister, the complete- 
ness with which he vindicates for these Africans their 
right to freedom, — the extensive research into the 
law of nations, and the broad principles of eternal 
justice, on which he supports their claim to be liber- 
ated, were probably not excelled by any public effort 
at that period, w^hether of the bar or the senate, 
lie concluded with the following touching remin- 
iscences of distinguished members of the bench and 
the bar, with whom in former times he had been 
associated : 

" May it please your honors: On the 7th of February, 1804, 
now more than thirty-seven years past, my name was entered, 
and yet stands recorded, on both tlie rolls, as one of the attor- 
neys and counsellors of this court. Five years later, in Feb- 
ruary and March, 1809, I appeared for the last time before 
this court, in defence of the cause of justice and of important 
rights, in which many of my fellow-citizens had property to a 
large amount at stake. Very shortly afterwards I was called 
lo the discharge of other duties, first in distant lands, and in 
later years within our own country, but in diflerent departr 
ments of her government. Little did I imagine that I should 
ever again be required to claim the right of appearing in the 
capacity of an officer of this court ; yet such has been the 
dictate of my destiny, and I appear again to plead the cause 
of justice, and now of liberty and life, in behalf of many of 
my fellow-men, before that same court which, in a former age, 
I had addressed in support of rights of property. I stand 
ao-ain, I trust for the last time, before the same court, 'Hie 
coeslus, arlemque repono.' I stand before the same court, but 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 327 

not before the same judges, nor aided by the same associates, 
nor resisted by the same opponents. As I cast my eyes akmg' 
those seats of honor and of public trust now occupied by you, 
they seek in vain for one of those honored and honorable per- 
sons whose indulgence listened then to my voice. Marshall, 
Gushing, Chase, Washington, Johnson, Livingston, Tudd, — 
where are they ? AVhere is that eloquent statesman and 
learned lawyer who was my associate counsel in the manage- 
ment of that cause, Robert Goodloe Harper? Where is that 
brilliant luminary, so long the pride of ^[aryland and of the 
American bar, then my opposing counsel, Luther Martin ? 
Where is the excellent clerk of that day, whose name has been 
inscribed on the shores of Africa as a monument of his abhor- 
rence of the African slave-trade, Elias B. Caldwell ? Where 
is the marshal — where are the criers of the court? Alas! 
where is one of the very judges of the court, arbiter of life 
and death, before whom I commenced this anxious argument, 
even now prematurely closed ? Where are they all ? Gone 
— gone — all gone! Gone from the services which in their 
day and generation they faithfully tendered to their country. 
From the excellent characters which they sustained in life, so 
far as I have had the means of knowing, I humbly hope, and 
fondly trust, they have gone to receive the rewards of blessed- 
ness on high. 

"In taking, then, my final leave of this bar, and of this hon- 
orable court, I can only ejaculate a fervent petition to Heaven 
that every member of it may go to his final account with as 
little of earthly frailty to answer for as those illustrious dead ; 
and that every one, after the close of a long and virtuous 
career in this world, may be received at the portals of the 
next with the approving sentence, ' Well done, good and 
faithful servant ; enter thou into the joy of thy Lord.' " 



CHAPTER XII. 

WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. HI3 

DEATH. VICE-PRESIDENT JOHN TYLER SUCCEEDS. RExMARKS OF 

MR. ADAMS ON THE OCCASION. HIS SPEECH ON THE CASE OF 

ALEXANDER M'LEOD. HIS VIEWS CONCERNING COMMONPLACE 

BOOKS. — HIS LECTURE ON CHINA AND CHINESE COMMERCE. 

/' REMARKS ON THE STATE OF THE COUNTRY, AND HIS DUTY IN RE- 
C LATION TO IT. — HIS PRESENTATION OF A PETITION FOR THE DIS-A 
SOLUTION OF THE UNION, AND THE VOTE TO CENSURE HIM FOR • 

DOING IT. HIS THIRD REPORT ON MR. SMITHSON'S BEQUEST.— 

HIS SPEECH ON _TIIE MISSION. . TO MEXICO. 

On the 4th of March, 1841, William Henry Harri- 
son, of Ohio, was inaugurated President of the United 
States, and John Tyler, of Virginia, Vice-President; 
each of whom had two hundred and thirty-four out of 
two hundred and ninety-four votes, — the whole num- 
ber, — and Martin Van Buren, the only other candidate 
for the Presidency, had sixty. Mr. Adams remarked 
that this inauguration was celebrated with demonstra- 
tions of popular feeling unexampled since that of 
Washington, in 1789, and at the same time with so 
much order and tranquillity that not the slightest 
symptom of conflicting passions occurred to disturb the 
enjoyments of the day. Many thousands of people 
from the adjoining, and considerable numbers from diS' 
tant states, were assembled to witness the ceremony. 

(328) 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCi' ADAMS. 329 

On the 4th of April, 1841, — precisely one calen- 
dar month after his inauguration, — rresidont Harri- 
son died. On this occasion Mr. Adams thus expressed 
himself : 

" The first impression of this event here, where it occurred, 
is of the frailty of all iiuman enjoyments, and the awful vicis- 
situdes woven into the lot of mortal man. He had reached, 
but one short month since, the pinnacle of honor and power in 
his own country. He lies a lifeless corpse in the palace pro- 
vided by his country for his abode. He was amiable and 
benevolent. Sympathy for his suilering and his fate is the 
prevailing sentiment of his fellow-citizens. The bereavement 
and distress of his family are felt intensely, albeit they are 
strangers here, and known scarcely to any one. 

"The influence of this event upon the condition and history 
of the country can scarcely be foreseen. It makes the Vice- 
President of the United States, John Tyler, of Virginia, acting 
President of the Union for four years, less one month. 

"Tyler is a political sectarian, of the slave-driving, Virgin- 
ian, Jeffersoniari school; principled against all improvement; 
with all the interests and passions and vices of slavery rooted 
in his nioral and political constitution ; with talents not above 
mediocrity, and a spirit incapable of expansion to the dimen- 
sions of the station on which he has been cast by the hand of 
Providence, unseen, through the apparent agency of chance. 
To that benign and healing hand of Providence I trust, in 
humble hope of the good which it always brings forth out of 
evil. In upwards of half a century this is the first instance 
of a Vice-President being called to act as President of the 
United States, and brings to the test that provision of the 
constitution which places in the executive chair a man never 
thought of for it by anybody. 

" Tyler deems himself qualified to perform the duties and 
exercise the powers and ofiice of President, on the death of 
President Harrison, without any other oath than that which 
he has taken as Vice-President ; yet, as doubts might arise, 



330 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

and for greater caution, he will take and subscribe the oath 
as President. May the blessing of Heaven upon this nation 
attend and follow this providential revolution in its govern- 
ment I For the present it is not joyous, but grievous. 

"The moral condition of this country is degenerating, and 
especially through the eifect of that part of its constitution 
which is organized by the process of unceasing elections. 
The spirit of the age and country is to accumulate power in 
the hands of the multitude : to shorten terms of service in 
high public places ; to multiply elections, and diminish exec- 
utive power; to weaken all agencies protective of property, or 
repressive of crime ; to abolish capital punishments and im- 
prisonment for debt. Slavery, intemperance, land-jobbing, 
bankruptcy, and sundry cohtroversies with Oreat Britain, 
constitute the materials for the history of John Tyler's admin- 
istration. But the improvement of the condition of man will 
form no part of his policy, and the improvement of his country 
will be an object of his most inveterate and inflexible opposi- 
tion." 

In September, 1841, one Alexander McLeod was 
imprisoned at Lockport, in the State of New York, 
under an indictment for murder. The following cir- 
cumstances were the occasion of these proceedings. 
A steamer, called the Caroline, owned and fitted out 
at Buffalo, had been engaged in aiding sertain insur- 
gents against the Canadian government with military 
apparatus and provisions ; and an expedition, sent by 
the British authorities, had cut the Caroline out of the 
port of Buffalo, set her on fire, and sent her floating 
over the Niagara Falls. In the fight which occurred 
one of the men on board the Caroline was killed. 

The excitement was general and excessive through- 
out the State of New York. McLeod was the leader in 
this expedition, and having, after the lapse of some 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 331 

time, visited that state, he was arrested, imprisoned, 
indicted, and the popuUir voice was chimorous that he 
should be hanged. Notwithstanding the British gov- 
ernment had declared that lie had acted under their 
authority as a military man, simply obeying the ordei 
of his superiors, a like state of feeling and purpose 
had extended to Congress, and a resolution had been 
introduced requesting the President to inform the 
House "whether any officer of the army, or the Attor- 
ney-General, had been directed to visit the State of 
New York for any purpose connected with the impris- 
onment or trial of Alexander McLeod ; or whether, 
by any executive measures, the British government 
had been given to understand that McLeod would be 
released." 

Fearing that the result of these proceedings might 
lead to a great and most formidable issue of peace 
and war between the United States and Great Britain, 
Mr. Adams took this occasion to express his views 
on the subject. 

" The first question which occurs to me is," he said, " what 
is the object of this resolution, and for what purpose has the 
house been agitated with it from the commencement of the 
session to this day ? The gentleman who ofl'ered it has dis- 
claimed all party purposes ; he breathes in a lofty atmos- 
phere, elevated high above that of party. But what sort of 
comprehension had both the friends and the opponents of the 
resolution put upon it? No party complexion ! 0, no I No ; 
it was patriotism — pure patriotism — patriotism pure and 
undefiled ! Well ; I am disposed to give gentlemen on all 
sides of the house credit ftn- whatever patriotism they pro- 
fess ; but sure it is that patriotism is a coat of many 



332 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

colors, and suited to very different complexions ; and, if it had 
not been for that unqualified profession of patriotism and no 
party, which had rung- through this house, from every gentle- 
man who had supported this resolution, I should have felt 
bound to believe it the rankest party measure that ever was 
introduced into this house. 

" What is the object of this resolutioQ ? It is to make an 
issue with Great Britain — an issue of right or wrong — upon 
the affair of burning the Caroline. No, sir ; never shall my 
voice be for going to war upon that issue. I will not go to 
war upon an issue upon which, when we go to a third power 
to arbitrate upon it, they will say we are wrong. The issue 
will be decided against us. We shall be told it is not the 
thing for us to quarrel about. 

" I have not the time, were I possessed of the information, 
to give a history of the affair of the Caroline ; and it is known 
as much to every member of the house as it is to me. We 
have heard a great deal of talk about territorial rights, and 
independence, and of state rights. But, in a question of that 
kind, other nations do not look much to your state rights 
nor to your independence questions. They will not talk of 
your independence ; but they will say who is right, and who 
is wrong. Who struck the first blow ? I take it, will be the 
main question with them. I take it that in the late affliir the 
Caroline was in hostile array against the British government, 
and that the parties concerned in it were employed in acts of 
war against it ; and I do not subscribe to the very learned opin- 
ion of the Chief Justice of the State of New York (not, I hear, the 
Chief Justice, but a Judge of the Supreme Court of that state), 
that there was no act of war committed. Nor do I subscribe 
to it that every nation goes to war only on issuing a declara- 
tion or proclamation of war. This is not the fact. Nations 
often wage war for j'^ears without issuing any declaration of 
war. The question is here not upon a declaration of war, but 
acts of war. And I say that, in the judgment of all impartial 
men of other nations, xve shall be held as a nation responsible ; 
that the Caroline there was in a state of war against Great 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 333 

Britain ; for purposes of war, and the worst kind of war, — tn 
sustain an insurrection — I will not say rebellion, because 
rebellion is a crime, and because I heard them talked of an 
'patriots.' Yes; and I have heard, in the cuurse of the tlis- 
cussion here, tl.ese patriots represented as carrying- un a rij^'-lit- 
eous cause, and that we ought to have assisted them ; that 
we ought to have given them that assistance that a natiun 
fighting for its liberty is entitled to from the generosity of 
other nations. Well, admit that merely for a moment. If we 
were bound to do it, we were bound to do it avowedly and 
above-board. But we disclaimed all intention of taking any 
part in it ; and yet there was very little disguise about this 
expedition, and that this vessel was there for the purposes of 
hostility against the Canadian government. I say, therefore, 
that we struck the first blow ; and if, instead of pressing this 
matter to a war, we were to refer it to a third power, even if 
it should be to a European republic, — if any such thing is 
remaining, — and should say there had been an invasion of our 
territory, they would ask us a question something like that 
which was put to a character in a play of Moliere : Que (liable 
allail ilfaire dans cetle galere? — What the devil had we to do 
in that galley ? 

"Now, I think the arbitrator would say, "What the devil 
had you to do with that steamboat ? " He would say that we 
struck the first blow. Now, admit that, — and none of your 
state rights men can deny it, — admit that, and all the rest 
follows of course. They will say it was wrong — abstractly, 
if you please. Talking of abstractions, it was wrong for an 
expedition to come over and burn the steamboat, and send 
her over the falls. But what was your steamboat about ? 
What had she been doing? What was she to do the next 
morning ? And what ought you to do ? You have reparation 
to make for all the men, and for all the arms and implements 
of war, which we were transporting, and going to transport, 
to the other side, to foment and instigate rebellion in Canada. 
That is what the third party would say to us. And it would 
come, in the end, after all the blood and treasure had been 
wasted by a war between the two countries, to this, that we 



334 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

must shake hands and drink champagne together, after having 
made a mutual apology for mutual transgression. That is the 
way things are settled between individuals, — ' If you said so, 
why, I said so,' — and thus the dispute is amicably settled. So 
we should have to do with this national matter ; for there is 
not any great difference in the essentials of quarrelling and 
making up between nations and individuals." 

Mr. Adams then proceeded to another point of 
view in which he objected to this resolution. He 
said : 

" A prodigious affair has been made of this matter, as if the 
government of the United States had outraged the State of 
New York, because the great empire State of New York had 
undertaken to say that she would hang McLeod, whatevei 
Great Britain or the general government might do. Yes ; 
whatever they might do, the great empire State of New York 
would hang McLeod ! That was the language. 

" What, sir, I ask, is the object of this resolution ? To 
inquire of the President of the United States whether any 
oificer of the army, or the Attorney-General of the United 
States, since the 4th of March last, has vivsited the State of 
New York for any purpose connected with the trial of Alex- 
ander McLeod. What then ? Has not the President a right 
to send the Attorney-General to New York on that or any 
other subject ? Where is the constitutional provision prohib- 
iting him from sending the Attorney-General to New York on 
that or any other of the subjects which are before the judicial 
courts of that state ? Yes, the Attorney-General has been 
sent there, and we have his instructions. And I have heard 
here, on the part of some of my forty friends from New York, 
a great deal about the conscious dignity and honor of this 
Empire State of New York. I am not very fond of that terra 
'empire state,' in the language of this Union ; and I say that 
if there is an ' empire state ' in the Union, it is Delaware. 
To be magniloquent, and talk about the empire state, may 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCT ADAMS. 3o5 



well become the forty gentlemen who represent tlie state on 
this floor, having reference to their own numbers, and tlio 
numbers of their constituents, or to the extent, fertility, and 
beauty, of her soil ; yet this is a distinction not recognized in 
the constitution of the United States. They are all, as mem- 
bers of this Union, equal, and the State of Delaware has as 
good a right to be called the ' empire state ' as New York. 
Now, if my forty friends from New York choose to call it the 
' empire state,' I will not quarrel with them. It is only as to 
consequences that I enter my caveat against the too frequent 
use of those terms on this floor ; for there is meaning in those 
words, ' empire state,' when used among co-estates, more than 
meets the ear. 

" Suppose that it was in Delaware that such an event had 
occurred ; do you suppose my friend here (Mr. Rodney) from 
Delaware would have offered such a resolution as this ? And, 
by the terms of the I'esolution, I should presume my friends 
from New York think there is a little more dignity and power 
in forty representatives than only one." 

In September, 1841, a plan for a newly-invented 
Commonplace Book, as an improvement upon Locke's, 
was brought to Mr. Adams for his recommendatory 
notice ; which he declined, from a general rule he had 
adopted on the subject, but said he thought it might 
be very useful, if a practical system of such a manual 
could be simplified to the intellect and industry of 

common minds, which he doubted. "I had occu- 

• 

pied and amused a long life," said he, "in the 
search of such a compendious wisdom-box, but without 
being able to find or make it. I had made myself 
more than one of Locke's Commonplace Books, but 
never used any one of them. I had learnt and prac- 
tised Byroni's Shorthand Writing, but no one could 



336 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

read it but myself. I had kept accounts by double 
entry, — day-book, journal, and ledger, with cash- 
book, bank-book, house-book, and letter-book. I had 
made extracts, copies, translations, and quotations, 
more perhaps than other man living, without ever 
being able to pack up my knowledge or my labors 
in any methodical order ; and now doubt whether I 
might not have employed my time more profitably in 
some one great, well-compacted, comprehensive pur- 
suit, adapting every hour of labor to the attainment 
of some great end." 

In December, 1841, Mr. Adams delivered before 
the Massachusetts Historical Society a lecture on the 
war then existing between Great Britain and China. 
The principles stated and maintained in that lecture 
were so much in advance of the opinions entertained 
at the time, that it is believed to have been published 
in but a single newspaper in this country or in Europe, 
and never in a pamphlet form, except by the proprie- 
tors of the Chinese Repository, published in Macao, 
China, in May, 1842. Though his views were ridi- 
culed or repudiated by many when delivered, they 
are at this day acknowledged ; and are made some of 
the chief grounds of the justification of that invasioi> 
of the Chinese empire now apparently in successful 
progress. The subject is of preeminent importance, 
and is canvassed with that laborious research and 
independence eminently characteristic of the author. 

In this lecture, after controverting the doctrine of 
an eminent French writer, who contended that there 
Was no such thing as international law, and that the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 337 

word law is not applicable to the uLligations incum- 
bent upon nations, on the ground that law is a rule 
of conduct prescribed by a superior ; and that nations, 
being independent, acknowledge no superior, an(' 
have no common sovereign from whom they can 
receive law, — Mr. Adams proceeds to maintain tliat 
"by the law of nations is to be understood, not 
one code of laws, binding alike on all the nations of 
the earth, but a system of rules varying according 
to the character and condition of the parties con- 
cerned." There is a law of nations, among Christian 
communities, which is the law recognized by the 
constitution of the United States as obligatory upon 
them in their intercourse with European states and 
colonies. But we have a different law of nations 
regulating our intercourse with the Indian tribes on 
this continent ; another, between us and the woolly- 
headed natives of Africa ; another, with the Barbary 
powers ; another, with the flowery land, or Celestial 
empire. This last is the nation with which Great 
Britain is now at war. Then, reasoning on the rights 
of property, established by labor, by occupancy, and 
by compact, he maintains that the right of exchange, 
barter, — in other words, of commerce, — necessarily 
follows ; that a state of nature among men is a state of 
peace ; the pursuit of happiness man's natural ri<:]it ; 
that it is the duty of men to contribute as much as 
is in their power to one another's happiness, and 
that there is no other way by which they can so 
well contribute to the comfort and well-being of one 
another as by commerce, or the mutual exchange 

22 



338 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCy ADAMS. 

of equivalents. These views and principles he thus 
illustrates : 

" The duty of commercial intercourse between nations is 
laid ^own in terms sufficiently positive by Vattel, but he 
afterwards qualifies it by a restriction, which, unless itself 
restricted, annuls it altogether, lie says that, although the 
general duty of commercial intercourse is incumbent upon 
nations, yet every nation may exclude any particular branch 
or article of trade which it may deem injurious to its own 
interest. This cannot be denied. But, then, a nation may 
multiply these particular exclusions, until they become gene- 
ral, and equivalent to a total interdict of commerce ; and this, 
time out of mind, has been the inflexible policy of the Chinese 
empire. So says Vattel, without affixing any note of censure 
upon it. Yet it is manifestly incompatible with the position 
which he had previously laid down, that commercial inter- 
course between nations is a moral obligation incumbent upon 
them all. 

" The empire of China is said to extend over three hundred 
millions of human beings. It is said to cover a space of seven 
millions of square miles — about four times larger than the 
surface of these United States. The people are not Chris- 
tians, nor can a Christian nation appeal to the principles of 
a common faith to settle the question of right and wrong 
between them. The moral obligation of commercial inter- 
course between nations is founded entirely and exclusively 
upon the Christian precept to love your neighbor as yourself. 
With this principle, you cannot refuse commercial intercourse 
with your neighbor, because, commerce consisting of a vol- 
untary exchange of property mutually beneficial to both par- 
ties, excites in both the selfish and the social propensities, 
and enables each of the parties to promote the happiness of 
his neighbors by the same act whereby he provides for his 
own. But, China not being a Christian nation, its inhabitants 
do not consider themselves bound by the Christian precept to 
love their neighbors as themselves. The right of commercial 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 339 

'"ntercourse with tliem reverts not to the execrable principle 
of Hobbes, that the state of nature is a state of war, wherp 
ever}' one has a right to buy, but no one is obliged to sell. 
Commerce becomes altogether a matter of conventiDU. The 
right of each party is only to propose ; that of the (jtlier is to 
accept or refuse, and to his result he may be guided exclu- 
sively by the consideration of his own interest, without regard 
to the interests, the wishes, or other wants, of his neighbor. 

" This is a churlish and unsocial system ; and I take occa- 
sion here to say that whoever examines the Christian system 
of morals with a philosophical spirit, setting aside all the 
external and historical evidences of its truth, will find all its 
precepts tending to exalt the nature of the animal man : all its 
purpose to be peace on earth and good will towards men. Ask 
the atheist, the deist, the Chinese, and they will tell you that 
the foundation of their system of morals is selfish enjoyment. 
Ask the philosophers of the Grecian schools, — Epicurus, 
Socrates, Zeno, Plato, Lucretius, Cicero, Seneca, — and 3'ou 
will find them discoursing upon the Supreme Good. They 
will tell you it is pleasure, ease, temperance, prudence, forti- 
tude, justice : not one of them will whisper the name of love, 
unless in its gross and phj'sical sense, as an instrument of 
pleasure ; not one of them will tell you that the source of all 
moral relation between 3'ou and the rest of mankind is to love 
your neighbor as yourself — to do unto him as you would that 
he should do unto you. 

" The Chinese recognize no such law. Their internal gov- 
ernment is a hereditary patriarchical despotism, and their 
own exclusive interest is the measure of all their relations 
with the rest of mankind. Their own govertiment is founded 
upon the principle that as a nation they are superior to the 
rest of mankind. They believe themselves and their country 
especially privileged over all others ; tluit their dominion is 
the celestial empire, and their territory the flowery land. 

" The fundamental principle of the Chinese empire is anti- 
commercial. It is founded entirely upon the second and third 
of Vattel's general principles, to the total exclusion of the first. 
It admits no obligation to hold commercial intercourse with 



340 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

others. It utterly denies the equality of other nations with 
itself, and even their independence. It holds itself to be the 
centre of the terraqueous globe, — equal to the heavenly host; 
— and all other nations with whom it has any relations, polit« 
ical or commercial, as outside tributary barbarians, reverently 
submissive to the will of its despotic chief It is upon this prin- 
ciple, openly avowed and inflexibly maintained, that the princi- 
pal maritime nations of Europe for several centuries, and the 
United States of America from the time of their acknowledged 
independence, have been content to hold commercial inter- 
course with the empire of China. 

" It is time that this enormous outrage upon the rights of 
human nature, and upon the first principle of the rights of 
nations, should cease. These principles of the Chinese empire, 
too long connived at and truckled to by the mightiest Christian 
nations of the civilized world, have at length been brought 
into conflict with the principles and the power of the British 
empire; and I cannot forbear to express the hope that Britain, 
after taking the lead in the abolition of the African slave-trade 
and of slavery, and of the still more degrading tribute to 
the Barbary African Mahometans, will extend her liberating 
arm to the furthest bound of Asia, and at the close of the 
present contest insist upon concluding the peace upon terms 
of perfect equality with the Chinese empire, and that the 
future commerce shall be carried on upon terms of equality 
and reciprocity between the two communities parties to the 
trade, for the benefit of both ; each retaining the right of 
prohibition and of regulation, to interdict any article or branch 
of trade injurious to itself, as for example the article of opium, 
and to secure itself against the practices of fraudulent traders 
and smugglers. This is the truth, and I apprehend the only 
question at issue between the governments and nations of 
Great Britain and China. It is a general, but I believe alto- 
gether a mistaken opinion, that the quarrel is merely for cer- 
tain chests of opium, imported by British merchants into 
China, and seized by the Chinese government for having been 
imported contrary to law. This is a mere incident to the dis- 
pute, but no more the cause of war than the throwing over- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 341 

board of the tea in Boston harbor was the cause of the North 
American Revolution. 

" The cause of the war is the pretension on the part of 
the Chinese that in all their intercourse with other nations, 
political or commercial, their superiority must be implicitly 
acknowledged, and manifested in humiliating furms. It is not 
creditable to the great, powerful, and enlightened nations of 
Europe, that for several centuries they have, for the sake of a 
profitable trade, submitted to these insolent and insulting pre- 
tensions, equally contrary to the first principles of the law of 
nature and of revealed religion — the natural equality of 
mankind — 

" 'Auri sacra fames, quid von morlalia pec for a cogis V 
" This submission to insult is the more extraordinary for 
being practised by Christian nations, which, in tlieir inter-, 
course with one another, push the principle of equality and 
reciprocity to the minutest punctilios of form." 

This lecture concludes with a sketch of the treat- 
ment of Lord Macartney by the Chinese emperor, in 
1792, when sent to that court as ambassador from 
Great Britain, illustrating and supporting its general 
argument. The remarks of Mr. Adams upon the 
distinction with a very small difference between "the 
bended knee" and "entire prostration," as a token 
of homage, — admitted as to the first, denied as to the 
last, by the British ambassador, — are characteristic. 



" The narrative of Sir George Staunton distinctly and posi- 
tively affirms that Lord Macartney was admitted to the pres- 
ence of the Emperor Kienlung, and presented to him his cre- 
dentials, without performing the prostration of the Kotow — 
the Chinese act of homage from the vassal to the sovereign 
lord. Ceremonies between superiors and inferiors are the per- 
sonification of principles. Nearly twenty-five years after tho 
.-epulse of Lord Macartney, in 1816, another splendid embassy 



342 MEMOIU OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

was despatched by the British government, in the person of 
Lord Amherst, who was much more rudely dismissed, without 
even being admitted to the presence of the emperor, or pass- 
ing a single hour at Pekin. A Dutch embassay, instituted 
shortly after the failure of that of Lord Macartney, fared 
no better, although the ambassador submitted with a good 
gr.tce to the prostration of the Kotow. A philosophical 
republican may smile at the distinction by which a British 
nobleman saw no objection to dehvering his credentials on the 
bended knee, but could not bring his stomach to the attitude 
of entire prostration. In the discussion which arose between 
Lord Amherst and the celestials on this question, the Chinese, 
to a man, insisted inflexibly that Lord Macartney had per- 
formed the Kotow ; and Kiaking, the successor of Kienlung, 
who had been present at the reception of Lord Macartney, 
personally pledged himself that he had seen his lordship in 
that attitude. Against the testimony to the fact of the impe- 
rial witness in person, it may well be conjectured how impos- 
sible it was for the British noble to maintain his position, 
■which was, after all, of small moment. The bended knee, no 
less than the full prostration to the ground, is a sjmibol of 
homage from an inferior to a sxiperior, and if not equally 
humiliating to tiie performer, it is only because he has been 
made familiar by practice with one, and not with the other. 
Li Europe, the bended knee is exclusively appropriated to the 
relations of sovereign and subject ; and no representative of 
any sovereign in Christendom ever bends his knee in present- 
ing his credentials to another. But the personal prostration 
of the ambassador before the emperor was, in the Chinese 
principle of exaction, symbolical not only of the acknowledg- 
ment of subjection, but of the fundamental law of the empire 
prohibiting all official intercourse upon a footing of equality 
between the government of China and the government of any 
other nation. All are included under the general denomina- 
tion of outside barbarians ; and the commercial intercourse 
with the maritime or navigating nations is maintained through 
the exclusive monopoly of the Hong merchants." 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIxNCY ADAMS. 343 

At the opening of the session of Congress, on the 
3d of December, 1841, Mr. Adams thus wrote con- 
cerning his own course and the country's prospects : 

'* Between the obligation to discharge my duty to the 
country and the obvious impossibility of accomplishing any- 
thing for the improvement of its condition by legislation, my 
deliberate judgment warns me to a systematic adherence to 
inaction upon all the controverted topics which cannot fail to 
be brought into debate. Upon the rule-question (that is, 
refusing to receive or refer petitions on the subject of slavery) 
I cannot be silent, but shall be left alone, as heretofore. I 
await the opening of the session with great anxiety ; more from 
an apprehension of my own imprudence than from a belief that 
the fortunes of the country will be much aflected, for good or 
evil, by anything that will be done. There is neither spotless 
integrity nor consummate ability at the helm of the ship, and 
she will be more than ever the sport of Avinds and waves, 
drifting between breakers and quicksands. May the wise and 
good Disposer send her home in safety ! " 

On the 24th of January, 1842, Mr. Adams pre- 
sented the petition of forty-five citizens of Haverhill, 
Massachusetts, praying that Congress would immedi- 
ately take measures peaceably to dissolve the Union of 
these States. 1st. Because no Union can be agreeable 
which does not present prospects of reciprocal bene- 
fits. 2d. Because a vast proportion of the resources 
of one section of the Union is annually drained to 
sustain the views and course of another section, with- 
out any adequate return. 3d. Because, judging from 
the history of past nations, that Union, if persisted 
in, in the present course of things, will certainly over- 
whelm the whole nation in utter destruction Mr 



V 



o 



44 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



Adams moved that the petition be referred to a select 
^committee, with instructions to report an answer 
Vl^/ showing the reasons why the prayer of it ought not 
to be granted. "'^^ 

The excitement the presentation of this petition 
produced was immediate and intense. Mr. Hopkins, 
of Virginia, moved to burn it in presence of the house. 
Mr. Wise, of the same state, asked the speaker if it 
was in order to move to censure any member for pre- 
senting such a petition. Mr. Gihner, also of Vir- 
ginia, moved a resolution, that Mr. Adams, for pre- 
senting such a petition, had justly incurred the censure 
of the house. Mr. Adams said that he hoped the 
resolution would be received and discussed. A desul- 
tory debate ensued, and was continued until the house 
adjourned. A caucus was immediately hekl by the 
opponents of Mr. Adams among the representatives 
from the South and West, to take measures to effect 
his expulsion. It was feared that the two thirds vote 
requisite to expel a member could not be obtained. 
Three resolutions were therefore prepared, the adop- 
tion of which it was deemed would in popuhir effect be 
equivalent to an expulsion. Thomas F. Marshall, of 
Kentucky, consented to present them the next day. 
The consideration of these resolutions, which continued 
until the 5th of February, produced a series of as vio- 
lent and personal debates as perhaps the halls of Con- 
gress ever witnessed. They were in these words : 

" Whereas, The federal constitution is a permanent form of 
government, and of perpetual obligation, until altered or mod 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 345 



ified in the mode pointed ont in that iiistninient ; and the 
members of this House, deriving their political character and 
powers from the same, are sworn to support it : and the dis- 
solution of the Union necessarily implies the destruction of 
that instrument, the overthrow of the American republic, and 
the extinction of our national existence : a proposition, there- 
fore, to the representatives of the people, to dissolve the 
organic laws framed by their constituents, and to support 
which they are commanded by those constituents to be sworn 
before they can enter into the execution of the political 
powers created by it and intrusted to them, is a high breach 
of privilege, a contempt offered to this House, a direct propo- 
sition to the legislature and each member of it to commit per- 
jury, and involving necessarily in its execution and its con- 
sequences the destruction of our country, and the crime of 
high treason. 

"Resolved, therefore, That the Honorable John Quincy 
AdamsTmember from Massachusetts, in presenting for the 
co^nsTHeratroiTof the Hoi^so of Representatives of the United 
States a petition praying for the dissolution of the Union, has 
offered the deepest indignity to the House of which he is a 
member, an insult to the people of the United States, of which 
that House is the legislative organ; and will, if this outrage be 
permitted to pass unrebuked and unpunished, have disgraced 
his country, through their representatives, in the eyes of the 
whole world. 

" Resolved, further, That the aforesaid John Quincy Adams, 
for this insult, the first of the kind ever offered to the govern- 
ment, ajid for the wound which he has permitted to be aimed, 
through his instrumentality, at the constitution and existence 
of his country, the peace, the security, and liberty of the 
people of these States, might well be held to merit expulsion 
from the national councils ; and the House deem it an act of 
grace and mercy when they only inflict upon him their sever- 
est censure for conduct so utterly unwortliy of his past rela- 
tions'%'flie state, and his present position. This they hereby 
do, f(?r the maintenance of their own purity and dignity. For 



346 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the rest, they turn him over to his own conscience, and the 
indignation of all true American citizens." 

The scene which occurred, on their presentation, is 
thus graphically described in the newspapers of the 
day: 

" On the 25th of January, the whole body of Southerners 
came into the House, apparently resolved to crush Mr. Adams 
and his cause forever. They gathered in groups, conversed 
in deep whispers, and the whole aspect of their conduct at 
twelve o'clock indicated a conspiracy portending a revolution. 
Thomas F. Marshall, of Kentucky, rose, and, having asked and 
received of Mr. Gilmer leave to offer a substitute for his reso- 
tion of censure which was pending at the adjournment, pre- 
sented the three prepared resolutions. He assumed a manner 
and tone as if he felt the historical importance of his position ; 
spoke with great coolness and solemnity, — a style wholly 
unusual with him ; assumed a solemn, magisterial air, and 
judicial elevation, as if he thought, in the insulence of his con- 
ceit, that he was about to pour down the thunder of condem- 
nation on the venerable object of his attack, as a judge pro- 
nouncing sentence on a convicted culprit, in the sight of 
approving men and angels. Warming somewhat with the 
silent, imposing attention of the vast audience before whom 
he spoke, he expanded into an inflated exhibition of his own 
past relations to the object of his attack, and thus represented 
himself eminently qualified to act the part he had assumed of 
prosecutor, judge, and executioner. When he finished, the 
speaker announced to Mr. Adams that his position entitled 
him to the floor, bringing up to the imagination a parallel 
scene : ' Then Agrippa said unto Paul, Thou art permitted 
to speak for thyself.' 

" Up rose, then, that bald, gray old man, his hands trem- 
bling with constitutional infirmity and age, upon whose con- 
secrated head the vials of tyrannic wrath had been outpoured. 
Among the crowd of slaveholders who filled the galleries he 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 347 

sould seek no friends, and but a few among those immediutoly 
around him. Unexcited, he raised his voice, high-keyed, as 
was usual with him, but clear, untreniulous, and firm. In 
a moment his infirmities disappeared, although liis shaking 
hand could not but be noticed : trembling not with fear, but 
with age. At first there was nothing of indignation in his 
tone, manner, or words. Surprise and cold contempt were 
all. But anon a flash of withering scorn struck the unhappy 
Marshall. A single breath blew all his mock-judicial array 
into air and smoke. In a tone of insulted majesty and 
reiuvigorated spirit, Mr. Adams then said, in reply to the 
audacious, atrocious charge of ' high treason : ' ' I call for the 
reading of the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independ- 
eucer'^Kead it ! read it ! and see what that says of the right 
"^f a peopTe~lO"Teform, to change, and to dissolve their gov- 
ernment.' _ 

" The look, the tone, the gesture, of the insulted patriot, at 
that instant were most imposing. The voice was that of 
sovereign command. The burthen of seventy-five winters 
rolled ofl', and he rose above the puny things around him, 
who thought themselves his eq^uals, from being his asso- 
ciates. 

" When the passage of the Declaration was read that 
solemnly proclaims the right of reform, revolution, and re- 
sistance to oppression, the old man thundered out, ' Read 
that again!' and he looked proudly round on the listening 
audience, as he heard his triumphant vindicatiou sounded 
forth in the glorious sentences of the revolutionary Magna 
Charta. 

" The sj'mpathetic revulsion of feeling was intense, though 
voiceless. Every drop of free, honest blood in that vast 
assemblage bounded with high impulse, every fibre thrilled 
with excitement. 

" A strong exhibition of the facts in the case, mostlj' in 
cold, calm, logical, measured sentences, concluded the high 
appeal of Mr. Adams, from the slaveholders of the present 
generation to the Father of that system of revolutionary lib- 



348 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

crty with which he is the coeval and the noblest champion 
And then he sat down vindicated, victorious." 

Apart from the excited interest of friends, the 
malign aspersions of political enemies, and his own 
indignant response to the hollow tirade of his assail- 
ants, his defence, reduced to its elements, was simply 
this : that the petition was sent to him for presenta- 
tion ; that it was a subject for which the signers of it 
had a constitutional right to petition, and that in pre- 
senting it he had proposed that the committee should 
be instructed to report reasons why it ought not to be 
granted. He said that he should not enter further 
into his self-defence at that time, but should wait to 
see the action of the house upon those resolutions. 
But whenever the proper time for his defence should 
come, he pledged himself to show that " a portion 
of the country from which the assailants came was 
endeavoring to destroy the right of habeas corpus, 
and of trial by jury, and all the rights in which the 
liberties of the country consist ;" — " that there was 
in that portion of country a systematic attempt even 
to carry it to the dissolution of the Union, with a con- 
tinual system and purpose to destroy all the principles 
of civil liberty among the free states, and by power to 
force the detested principles of slavery on the free 
States of this Union ;" a pledge which in the course 
of his subsequent argument he fully redeemed. 

The last of January, Mr. Adams thus expressed 
himself concerning these proceedings : ' ' My occu- 
pations during the month have been confined entirely 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 0-19 

to the business of the house, and for the last ten day.s 
to the defence of myself against an extensive com- 
bination and conspiracy, in and out of Congress, to 
crush the liberties of the free people of this Union, ]»y 
disgracing mo with the brand of censure, and displac- 
ing me from the chair of the Committee on Foreign 
Affairs, for my perseverance in presenting abolition 
petitions. I am in the midst of that fiery ordeal, and 
day and night absorbed in the struggle against this 
attempt at my ruin. God send me a good deliver- 
ance ! " 

Intemperate debates, with violence undiminished, 
succeeded, in which all the topics of party censure, 
from the adoption of the constitution, were collected 
and heaped upon Mr. Adams by Marshall, Wise, 
Gilmer, and others. 

On the 3d of February Mr. Adams took the floor, 
and spoke for two hours in his own defence, with an 
eloquence and effect to which no description can do 
justice. He touched the low underplot of the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs with pointed severity and 
bitter truth, and then gave amusing particulars of 
missives he had received from the South threatening 
him with assassination. Among other kindly hints 
sent through the post-office was a colored lithograph 
portrait of himself, with the picturesque annotation of 
a rifle-ball on the forehead, and a promise that such 
a remedy " would stop his music." He alluded to 
these communications with perfect good nature, some 
of them being identical with words used towards him 
by Mr. Gilmer. A further account of them will be 



350 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUIxXCY ADAMS. 

given from the correspondent of the newspapers of 
the day.* 

" Among the many strange impressions of these singular 
scenes, nothing is more striking than the total, disgraceful 
ignorance which prevails as to who John Quincy Adams is. 
That he has been President of the United States, and had pre- 
viously borne high offices, seems occasionally to be vaguely 
remembered by a few of the most intelligent of his perse- 
cutors. But of the part which he has borne for half a century 
in the history of America and of the world they know no more 
than they do of the Vedas and Puranas. 

" The thread of this great discourse was his present and 
past relations to Virginia and Virginians. After gratefully 
acknowledging his infinite obligations to the great Virginians 
of the first age of the federal republic, he modestlj^ and unpre- 
tendingly recounted the unsought exalted honors heaped 
upon him by Washington, Madison, and Monroe, and detailed 
with touching simplicity and force some of his leading actions 
in the discharge of those weighty trusts. As he went back 
through the historic vista of patriotic achievements, he 
seemed to renew his youth like the eagles, and rose into a 
still loftier and bolder strain than in the withering retort with 
which he struck down Wise and Marshall. In passing over 
the preliminaries of his discourse, he chanced to fix his eye on 
the latter, who was moving down one of the side aisles. 
Instantly, at the suggestion of the moment, he burst forth 
into a beautiful appeal to the hallowed memory of the vener- 
ated and immaculate Virginian who once bore the name of 
Marshall through a long career of judicial honor and use- 
fulness. The general interest in this appeal to the past 
was impressive. The members of the house drew together 
around him ; even his persecutors paid an involuntary tribute 
t) 'the old man eloquent.' 

* See the Boston Courier and J\''ew York .American of the period. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 351 

"Lord Morpeth was an attentive spectator and auditor of 
these scenes of turbulence ; and it was interesting to see a 
British statesman looking up to learn from such a source the 
unwritten history of his own country, as well as of Eunjpe. 
For such it was, when Mr. Adams gave the history of the 
movements at the court of the Emperor Alexander, and his 
connection with them, which resulted in the Kussu-British 
alliance and in the overthrow of Napoleon. The early- 
chosen favorite of Washington, the trusted counsellor of 
Jefferson, the much-honored agent of Madison, the guide 
and chief support of Monroe, the restorer of the purity 
of the Washingtonian epoch to the Presidential chair, and 
for the last ten years the bold champion of universal liberty, 
stood there baited by absurd charges of perjury and treason, 
by insignificant beings of yesterday. 

" The monument of a past age, a beacon to the present, 
a landmark to the future, he towered above the little thincrs 
around him. The beautiful poetic appeal to Virginia, with 
which he concluded, caused a thrill of delighted admiration 
in the whole assembly. The emphasis, the pathetic intona- 
tion, touched eveiy heart. The triumph of Mr. Adams was 
complete." 

On the eleventh day of this debate, Mr. Adams, in 
opening his defence, said that he had been charg-ed 
by his assaihint with consuming an unreasonable 
portion of the time of the house with his own allairs ; 
but he thouglit that six days could not be deemed an 
extravagant requirement for the defence of a man sit- 
uated as he was, when a great portion of that period 
had been consumed by his assaiLants, tlieir associ- 
ates, and others. He did not desire to be responsi- 
ble for any unnecessary consumption of tlie hours of 
debate. He wished, indeed, to state the whole affair; 
and, to accomplish this, he should require a great deal 



352 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

more time. He had laid out a great platform for his 
defence, if he was forced to continue it ; but he was 
willing to forego it all, provided it could be done with- 
out sacrificing his rights, the rights of his constituents, 
and those of the petitioners. He then stated that if 
any gentleman would make a motion to lay the whole 
subject on the table, he would forbear to proceed any 
further with his defence. This motion was imme- 
diately made by Mr. Botts, of Virginia, and the 
house decided in its favor, by a vote of one hundred 
and six to ninety-three. The petition from Haverhill 
was then taken up and refused to be received ; 
one hundred and sixty-six in the affirmative to forty 
in the negative. 

On the 12th of April, 1842, Mr. Adams, as chair- 
man of the committee on the Smithsonian fund, made 
a report in the form of a bill, the object of which was 
to settle three fundamental principles for the adminis- 
tration and management of the fund in all after time. 
The bill provided. First, that the principal fund should 
be preserved and maintained unimpaired, with an 
income secured upon it at the rate of six per cent, a 
year, from which all appropriations for the purposes 
of the founder should be made. Second, that the 
portions of the income already accrued and invested 
in state stocks should be constituted funds, from 
the annual income of which an astronomical observer, 
with suitable assistants, should be supported. Third, 
that in the future management of this fund no part 
of it should be applied to any institution of education, 
or religious establishment. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 353 

To the persevering spirit with whirh ^Iv. Aihiiii.s 
on every occasion urged upon Congress and the peo- 
ple of the United States the observance of those lun- 
dtimental principles which ho had first asserted and 
which he afterwards uninterruptedly maintained, not- 
withstanding a local and interested opposition to 
them, may be justly attributed the preservation of 
that fund, and its subsequent application to the objects 
of the founder's bequest, although in his prevailing 
desire that an astronomical observatory should be one 
of them, he did not succeed. Connected with this 
report, all the previous proceedings in relation to it 
Avere ngain published, for the information of Congress 
and the public. 

On the 14th of the same month, a bill making 
appropriations for the civil and diplomatic expenses 
of government being under consideration, Mr. Linn, 
of New York, moved to strike out so much of it as 
relaTed to a minister to Mexico, expressing his belief 
that the object of this mission was to bring about 
the annexation of Texas. A debate ensued, which 
was desultory and declamatory on the part of those 
advocating the appropriation. Mr. Wise, of Virginia, 
said that the tyrant of Mexico was" now at war ^^itll 
Texas ; that he threatened to invade her territory, 
and never stop until he had driven slavery beyond the 
Sabine ; and that the gentlemen opposed to the mis- 
sion would let him loose his servile horde, and yet send 
no minister to remonstrate or to threaten. Our citi- 
zens had claims on that government to the amount of 
twelve or thirteen millions. Ten or a dozen of our citi- 

23 



354 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCr ADAMS. 

zens — of our own native citizens — were in degrad- 
ing bondage in the mines of Mexico, or sweeping its 
streets ; and yet a minister to Mexico was opposed 
because the President and a party in this country 
wished to annex Texas to the Union. It was not only 
the duty of this government to demand the liquidation 
of our claims and the liberation of our citizens, but 
to go further, and demand the non-invasion of Texas. 
We should at once say to Mexico, "If you strike 
Texas, you strike us." And if England, standing 
by, should dare to intermeddle and ask, "Do you 
take part with Texas?" his prompt answer would be, 
" Yes, and against you." 

Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, followed on the 
same side, maintaining that Texas ought to be 
annexed to the Union, even at the risk of a war with 
Great Britain. He said that he was a man of peace, 
and was not insensible to the evils of w^ar, but he 
contended that they were greatly exaggerated. He 
wished the British minister to understand that war 
would not do us so much harm as it would his own 
country. In the first place, if we chose to apply the 
principles of war, it paid all the state debts at once, 
— two hundred millions of dollars. At all events, it 
suspended the interest during the war. We had a 
sufficient population, the capacity of drilling that 
population, and all the materials for war. There 
were two vessels now within the sound of his voice 
to which there was nothing in a British or French 
navy to be compared. Our lakes were covered with 
transporting steamboats, wdiich could easily be made 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 355 

effective for harbor defence. We lived in a republican 
country, in an armed nation ; and he would ralhfT 
take this nation as it was than the most completely 
armed nation in the world. Having proceeded at 
great length in this strain, stating various particulars, 
some of which may be gathered from Mr. Adams' 
reply, he concluded by challenging opposition to the 
opinion that there was no right of search in time of 
war, and that such a claim was a monstrosity. The 
greatest question in the world, which now agitated 
nearly all Christendom, was this mixed question of 
the slave-trade and the right of visit and search. 
To statements and arguments of this force and nature 
Mr. Adams made a scrutinizing and unanswerable 
reply, of which the following extract will sufliciently 
exhibit the power and quality. 

"The gentleman from Pennsylvania began by saying tliat 
he was for peace — for universal peace. Then followed a 
most learned dissertation to prove that it was an entire mis- 
take to suppose that we are not now prepared for war ; and 
to demonstrate that a nation which goes into a war unpre- 
pared will infallibly conquer ; that it must be so ; that every 
unarmed and unprepared nation always had conquered its 
armed opposers. Xo ; we are not unprepared for war, — not 
at all, — because we have in sight of the windows of this capi- 
tol two armed steamers ; one of them, as I am informed, nearly 
disabled, so that she will need, in a great measure, to be 
rebuilt, leaving for our use, in case of immediate hostilities, one 
entire steamer, and with that we are to burn London ; and 
./^"though the gentleman readily admitted that it was possible, 
nay, very probable, that New York would be burnt too, yet, j 
as London was four or five times as large, we should have a / 
great balance of burning on our side. Yes : we were to con- 



356 MEMOIR OF JOHN QDINCY ADAMS. 

quer Great Britain and burn London, and we were told that 
it would be a very cheap price for all this to have the city 
of New York burnt in tui'n, or burnt first. And this was an 
argument for peace ! 

" What else did the gentlemen say ? What else did he 
not say ? He made a great argument and a valorous display 
of zeal in relation to the right of search. 0, that — that was 
a point never to be conceded — no, never. He maintained 
that there is no such thing as a right of search — no such 
right in time of war, none in time of peace. Well, I do 
agree with the gentleman partially on that one point, so far 
as to believe that there is no need of our coming to an 
issue with Great Britain there, and we have not as yet. 
After reading, as I have done, and carefully examining the 
papers put forth on both sides, I asked myself, What is the 
question between us ? And I have heard men of the first 
intelligence say that they found themselves in the very same 
situation. The gentleman has made a total misrepresentation 
of the demand of Great Britain in the matter. She has never 
claimed the right to search American vessels — no such thing. 
On the contrary, she has explicitly disclaimed any such pre- 
tension, and that to the whole extent we can possibly 
demand. What is it we do demand ? Not that Great Britain 
should disclaim the right to search American vessels, but we 
deny her the right to board pirates who hoist the American 
flag. Yes ; and to search British vessels, too, that have been 
declared to be pirates by the laws of nations, pirates by the 
laws of Great Britain, pirates by the laws of the United 
States. That is the demand of our late minister to London, 
whose letters are so much admired by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania. Now, it happens that behind all this exceeding 
great zeal against the right of search is a question which the 
gentleman took care not to bring into view, and that is the 
support and perpetuation of the African slave-trade. That is 
the real question between the ministers of America and Great 
Britain : whether slave-traders, pirates, by merely hoisting the 
American flag, shall be saved from capture. 

'■ I say there is no such thing as an exemption from the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 357 

right of search by the laws of nations, and I clialh-iigo ami 
defy the gentleman to produce the proof The riglit of searcli 
in time of war we have never pretended to deny. Nay, wo 
ourselves exercised that right during the lawt war. And 
the Supreme Court of the United States, in their decisions 
of prize cases brought before them, sustained us in doing su, 
and said it was lawful according to the laws of natit)n8. And, 
indeed, we should have had a very poor chance in a war with 
Great Britain, without it. 

" But what is the right of search in time of peace ? And 
how has Congress felt, and how has the American govern- 
ment acted, on this point ? I have some knowledge on this 
subject. In the year 1817, when I was about to return from 
England to the United States, Mr. Wilberforce, then a mem- 
ber of the British Parliament, very celebrated for his long and 
persevering exertions to suppress the African sUive-trade, 
"wrote me a note requesting an interview. 1 acceded 
promptly to his request ; and in conversation lie stated to me 
that the British government had found that without a mutual 
right of search between this country and that, upon the coast 
of Africa, it would be impossible to carry through the sys- 
tem she had formed in connection with the United States for 
the suppression of that infamous traffic. I had then just 
signed with my own hand a treaty declaring ' the traffic in 
slaves (not the African slave-trade, but the traffic in slaves) 
unjust and inhuman,' and in which both nations engaged to 
do all in their power to suppress it. Mr. Wilberforce 
inquired of me whether I thought that a proposal for a mutual, 
restricted, qualified right of search would be acceptable to the 
American government. I had at that time a feeling to the 
full as strong against the right of search, as it had then been 
exercised by British cruisers, as ever the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania (Mr. IngersoU) had, in all his life. I had been 
myself somewhat involved in the question as a public man. 
It constituted one of the grounds of my unfortunate diflerence 
from those with whom I had long been politically associated ; 
and it was for the exertions I had made against the admission 
'jf tiiat right that 1 forfeited my place in the other end of the 



358 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Capitol, and, which was infinitely more painful to me, for this 
1 had diftered with men long dear to me, and to whom I had 
also been dear, insomuch that for a time it interrupted all 
friendly relations between us. 

" The first thing 1 said, in reply to Mr. Wilberforce, was : 
' No ; you may as well save yourselves the trouble of making 
any proposals on that subject; my countrymen, 1 am very sure, 
will never assent to any such arrangement.' He then entered 
into an argument, the full force of which I felt, when I said 
to him, ' You may, if you think proper, make the proposal ; 
but 1 think some other mode of getting over the difficulty 
must be resorted to ; for the prejudices of my country are so 
immovably strong on that point, that I do not believe they 
will ever assent.' 

" I returned home, and, under the administration of Mr. 
Monroe, I filled the office of Secretary of State ; and in that 
capacity I was the medium through which the proposal of the 
British government was afterwards made to the United States 
to arrange a special right of search for the suppression of the 
slave-trade. This proposition I resisted and opposed in the 
cabinet with all my power. And I will say that, although I 
was not myself a slaveholder, I had to resist all the slave- 
holding members of the cabinet, and the President also. Mr. 
Monroe himself was always strongly inclined in favor of the 
proposition, and I maintained the opposite ground against 
him and the whole body of his official advisers as long as I 
could. 

"At tliat time there was in Congress, and especially in the 
House, a spirit of concession, which I could not resist. From 
the year 1818 to the year 1823, not a session passed without 
some movement on this point, and some proposition made to 
request the President to negotiate for the mutual concession 
of this right of Sf^arch. I resisted it to the utmost ; and so 
earnest did the matter become, that, on one occasion, at an 
evening party in the President's house, in a conversation 
between myself and a distinguished gentleman of Virginia, — 
a principal leader of this movement, now living, but not now 
a member of this house, — words became so warm that what 



MEMOIR OF JOUN QUINCV ADAMS. 3-30 

I said was afterwards alluded to by anothci- geiitluiuaii oi" Vir- 
ginia, in an address to his constituents, against my election aa 
President of the United States. It was made an olijrction 
against nie that I was an enemy to the suppression of the 
slave-trade. That address and my reply to it are in existence, 
and the latter in the hands of a gentleman of Virginia now in 
this house, and who can correct me if I do not state the mat- 
ter correctly. The address was written, and wmuM have been 
published, with an allusion to what I had said in the conver- 
sation (which the writer heard, although it was not addressed 
to him), but the gentleman with whom I was conversing went 
to him, and told him that if he did refer in print to that pri- 
vate conversation, he would never speak to him ; and so it 
was suppressed. I state these facts, sir, that I may set my- 
self right on tliis question of the right of search. 

"At that time a gentleman, who was the leader of one of 
the parties in this house, had endeavored from year to year to 
prevail with the house to require of the President a conces- 
sion of the right asked. I name him to honor him ; for he 
was one of the most talented, laborious, eloquent, and useful 
men upon this floor. I allude to Charles Fenton Mercer, of 
Virginia. Session after session, he brought forward his reso- 
lution ; and he continued to press it, unlil, linally, in 1823, he 
brought the house by yeas and naj^s to vote their assent to it ; 
and, strange to say, there were but nine votes against it. 
The same thing took place in the other house. The joint res- 
olution went to the President, and he accordingly entered into 
the negotiation. It was utterly against my judgment and 
wishes ; but I was obliged to submit, and I prepared the 
requisite despatches to Mr. Rush, then our minister at the 
court of London. When he made his proposal to Mr. Can- 
ning, Mr. Canning's reply was, ' Draw up your convention, 
and I will sign it.' Mr. Rush did so, and Mr. Canning, with- 
out the slightest alteration whatever, — witliout varying the 
dot of an i, or the crossing of a /, — did affi.x to it his signa- 
ture ; thus assenting to our own terms in our own language. 

"The convention came back here for ratification; but, in 
the mean time, another spirit came over the feelings of this 



o 



GO MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



nouse, as well as of the Senate. A party had been formec! 
against the administration of Mr. Monroe ; the course of the 
administration was no longer favored, and the house came out 
in opposition to a convention drawn in conformity to its own 
previous views. 

" But now, as I do not wish to intrude on the attention of 
this committee a single moment longer than is necessary, I 
will pass over the rest of what I might say on this subject, 
and recur, in a few observations, to the other war-trumpet 
which we have heard within the last two days. 

" They unite in one purpose, though they seem to be pursu- 
ing it by different means. The gentleman from Virginia (Mr. 
Wise), confining his observations to our relations with Mex- 
ico, also urges us to war with the same professions of a disposi- 
tion for peace as were so often repeated by the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania in regard to Great Britain. He does not imme- 
diately connect the questions of war with Mexico and war 
with Great Britain, but apparently knows and feels that they 
are in substance and in fact but one and the same question ; 
and that, so surely as we rush into a war with Mexico, we 
shall shortly find ourselves in a war with England. The gen- 
tleman appeared entirely conscious of that ; and I hope that 
no member of this committee will come to the conclusion that 
it is possible for us to have a war with Mexico without at the 
same time going to war with Great Britain. On that subject 
I will venture to say that the minister from England has no 
instructions. That is not one of the five points on which the 
gentleman from Pennsylvania tells us our controversy with 
England rests, and the surrendering of which is to open to 
that minister so easy a road to an earldom. The war with 
Mexico is to be produced by different m'eans, and for diiferent 
purposes. I think the gentleman from Virginia, in his speecli, 
rested the question of the war with Mexico upon three grounds : 
1st, That our citizens had claims against the Mexican govern- 
ment to the amount of ten or twelve millions ; 2d, That some 
ten or twelve of our citizens had been treated with great sever- 
ity, and suffered disgrace and abuse from the Mexican govern- 
ment, having been made slaves, aud compelled to work at 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. oGl 

cleansing' the streets; that these citizens were ih:>tuined in 
servitude, while one British subject had been promptly released 
on the first demand of the British minister there ; and, 3d, 
That a war with Mexico would accomplish the annexation of 
Texas to the Union. The gentleman was in favor of war, not 
merely for the abstract purpose of annexing Texas to the 
Union, but ho was for war by peremptorily prohibiting Santa 
Anna from invading Texas. 

"I will take up these reasons in ord(M-. And, (irst, as to 
g-oingto war for the obtaining of these ten or twelve millions 
of dollars, being the claims of our own citizens on Mexico. 
This seems a very extraordinary reason, when, according to 
the doctrine of the gentleman from Pennsylvania, a state of 
war at once extinguishes all national debts. If we go to war 
with Mexico, her debts to our citizens will be expunged at 
once, if the doctrine of the gentleman from Pennsylvania bo 
true. He did, to be sure, qualify the position by saying, that 
war would at least suspend the payment of interest. If so, 
then it would equally suspend interest in the case of Mexico. 
The arguments of the two war gentlemen happen to cross 
each other, though they are directed to the same end. One 
of them will have us go to war with Mexico to recover twelve 
millions of dollars ; the other would have us go ti^ war with 
England to wipe out a debt of two hundred millions. I will 
not compare the arguments of the two gentlemen together ; 
but I will say, in regard to the doctrine of the gentleman from 
Pennsylvania, that it has quite too much of repudiation in it 
for my creed. 1 do not think that a war with England would 
extinguish these two hundred millions, but that, on the con- 
trary. Great Britain would be likely to say to us, ' We will go 
to war to recover the money you owe us.' That is one of the 
questions which we must settle if we go to war, but which wo 
might otherwise, at least for a time, stave off. But, if we go 
to war, what must be the effect of the peace that follows ? 
We must pay our two hundred millions, with the interest. As 
to our debt from Mexico, I believe the way to recover it is not 
to go to war for it ; for war, besides failing to re<;over the 



o 



62 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



money, will occasion us the loss of ten times the amount in 

"other ways. 

»- " As to war producing a suspension of interest on a national 
debt, let the gentleman look back a little to the wars of France. 
In 1793 France was at war with almost all the countries of 
Europe, and she immediately confiscated all her debts to them. 
But what happened thirty years after, when the reaction came ? 
The allies took Paris, and, in the settlement which then took 
place, they compelled France to pay all her debts, with full 
interest on the whole period during which payment had been 
suspended. That was the consequence to France of going to 
war to extinguish debts. And, if we go to war with Great 
Britain to-morrow, she will make us, as one of the conditions 
of peace, pay our whole debt of two hundred millions, with 
interest. And what shall we gain? Spend millions upon 
millions every year, as long as the war continues ; and, unless 
it is greatly successful, have to pay our debt at last, principal 
and interest. This would depend on the chances of war, or 
the issues of battle. And, as our contests would be chiefly 
on the ocean, we must first obtain a superiority on the seas 
before we can put her down and vanquish her ; and this to 
save ourselves from the payment of two hundred millions 
justly due from our citizens to hers ! 

" There is a second reason given by the gentleman from 
Virginia in favor of war. He reminds us, with great warmth, 
that there are some ten or twelve citizens of the United States 
now prisoners in the city of Mexico, and dragging chains 
about the streets of that city ; that a British subject taken 
with them has been liberated, while they are kept in bondage. 
Now, if I am correctly informed, one American citizen, a son 
of General Coombs, has been liberated on the application of the 
minister of the United States, who was as fairly a subject of 
imprisonment as the British subject of whom the gentleman 
speaks. I certainly have no objections to our minister's mak- 
ing such representations as he can in favor of the release of 
citizens of the United States, although taken in actual war 
against Mexico, in association with Texian forces ; but I 
am not prepared to go to war to obtain their liberation. I 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 3C5 

must first be permitted to ask how it is that tlicse men happen 
to be in the streets of Mexico.' Is it not because they formed 
part of an expedition got up in Texas against tlie Mexican 
city of Santa Fe ? Were they not tsikcnjlajraitle bdlo, actually 
engaged in a war they had nothing to do with, to wliich the 
United States were no party ? In all this great pity and sym- 
pathy for American citizens made to travel hundreds of miles 
barefoot and in chains, the question ' How came they there V 
seems never to be asked. And yet, so far as the interposition 
of this nation for their recovery is concerned, that is the very 
first question to be asked. 

" I come now to the third ground for war urged bj' tlie 
gentleman from Virginia, and I hope I do not misrepresent 
him when I say that I understood him to affirm that if ho 
had the power he would prohibit the invasion of Texas by 
Mexico ; and if Mexico would not submit to such a require- 
ment, and should persist in her invasion, he would g^j to war. 
The gentleman stated, as a ground for war, that Santa Anna 
had avowed his determination to ' drive slavery beyond the 
Sabine.' That was what the gentleman from Virginia most 
apprehended — that slavery would be abolished in Texas ; that 
we should have neighbors at our doors not contaminated by 
that accursed plague-spot. lie would have war with Mexico 
sooner than slavery should be driven back to the United 
States, whence it came. If that is to be the avowed opinion 
of this committee, in God's name let my constituents know it ! 
The sooner it is proclaimed on the house-tops, the better — the 
house is to go to war with Mexico for the purpose of annexing 
Texas to this Union ! " 



CHAPTER XIII. 

REPORT ON PRESIDENT TYLER'S APPROVAL, WITH OBJECTIONS, OF THE 

BILL FOR THE APPORTIONMENT OF REPRESENTATIVES. REPORT ON 

HIS VETO OF THE BILL TO PROVIDE A REVENUE FROM IMPORTS. 

LECTURE ON THE SOCIAL COMPACT, AND THE THEORIES OF FILMER, 
HOBBES, SYDNEY, AND LOCKE. — ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS ON 
THE POLICY OF PRESIDENT TYLER's ADMINISTRATION. — ADDRESS TO 

THE NORFOLK COUNTY TEMPERANCE SOCIETY. DISCOURSE ON THE 

NEW ENGLAND CONFEDERACY OF 1643. LETTER TO THE CITIZENS OF 

BANGOR ON WEST INDIA EMANCIPATION. ORATION ON LAYING THE 

CORNER-STONE OF THE CINCINNATI OBSERVATORY. 

On the 23d of June, 1842, President Tyler an- 
nounced to the House of Representatives that he had 
signed and approved an act for the apportionment of 
representatives among the several states, and had 
deposited the same in the office of the Secretary of 
State, accompanied with his reasons for giving to it 
his sanction ; by which it appeared that, after having 
officially "approved" that act, he had declared, in 
effect, that he did not approve of it, having doubts 
concerning both its constitutionality and expediency, 
and that he had signed it only in deference to the 
opinions of both houses of Congress. Mr. Adams, 
from the committee to whom these proceedings of the 
President had been referred, in a report to the House 
severely scrutinizes the course of the President in 

(364) 



WEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 3C5 

this respect. lie declares that the duty of the Pres- 
ident, in exercising the authority given hiiu by iliu 
constitution to sign and approve acts of Congress, is 
prescribed in terms equally concise and precise ; and 
that it has given him no power to alter, amend, cuui- 
ment upon, or assign his reasons for the performance 
of his duty. These views he illustrates by a minute 
examination of the language of that instrument, 
and shows that what the President had done was a 
departure not only from the language but from the 
substance of the law prescribing to him his duties 
in that respect. Mr. Adams then, in behalf of the 
committee, after showing that the proceeding of the 
President in this instance is without precedent or 
example, and imminently dangerous in its tendencies, 
proceeds to remark : 

" The entry upon the bill is, 'Approved : John Tyler ; " and 
that entry makes it the law of the land ; and then, by a pri- 
vate note deposited with the law in the Department of State, 
the same hand which, under the sacred obligation of an official 
oath, has written the word 'approved,^ and added the sign- 
manual of his name, feels it due to himself to declare that the 
bill is not approved, and that he doubts both its constitution- 
ality and its policy, and that he signs it only in deference to 
the declared will of both houses of Congress ; not from assent 
to their reasons, but in submission to their will. 

" And he feels it due to himself to say this, — first, that his 
motives for signing it may be rightly understood ; secondly, 
that his opinions may not be liable to be misunderstood, or, 
thirdly, quoted hereafter erroneously as a precedent. The 
motives of a President of the United States for signing an act 
of Congress can be no other than because he approves it ; ami 
because, in that event, the constitution enjoins it upon him lu 



366 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

sign it as a duty, which he has sworn to perform, and with 
which he cannot dispense. 

" But no ; in the present case the President feels it due to 
himself to say that his motives for signing the bill were not 
because he approved it, or because it was made by the consti- 
tution his duty to sign it, but to prove his submission to the 
will of Congress. He feels it due also to himself to guard 
against the liability of his opinions to misconstruction, or to 
be quoted hereafter erroneously as a precedent. His signa- 
ture to the bill, preceded by the word ' approved,^ taken in 
connection with the duties prescribed to the President of the 
United States by the constitution, certainly was liable to the 
construction that his opinions were favorable to the bill. They 
were, indeed, liable to no other construction respectful to him, 
or trustful to his honor and sincerity ; nor can there be a 
doubt that they would have been quoted hereafter as a prece- 
dent. No man living could have imagined that the word 
'approved^ could be construed to mean either doubt or obse- 
quious submission to the will of others ; and it is with extreme 
regret that the committee see, in the President's exposition of 
his reasons for signing an act of Congress, the open avowal 
that, in his vocabulary, used in the performance of one of the 
most solemn and sacred of his duties, the word ' approved ' 
means not approval, but doubt ; not the expression of his own 
opinions, but mere obsequiousness to the will of Congress." 

The report proceeds to deny that the example of the 
advice given by the first Secretary of State to the first 
President of the United States, which the President 
adduces in his support, and the following that advice 
by that President, gave any "sanction to such recorded 
duplicity." It asserts that such an example is of dan- 
gerous tendency — an encroachment by the Executive 
on legislative functions; that the reasons given by Pres- 
ident Tyler are a running commentary against the law, 
against its execution according to the intention of the 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. oG7 

legislature, and forestalling the approjjriate action of 
the judicial tribunals in expounding it. These and 
consentaneous views the report largely illustrates, and 
concludes with a resolution declaring the proceedings 
of the President in this case to have been unwar- 
ranted by the constitution and laws uf the United 
States, injurious to the public interest, and of evil 
example in future ; solemnly protesting against its 
ever being repeated, or adduced as a precedent here- 
after. 

On the 9th of August, 1842, President Tyler 
returned to the House of Representatives the bill to 
provide a rcA^enue from imports, and changing the 
existing laws imposing duties on them, accompanied 
with his objections to it. The house referred the sub- 
ject to a select committee, of which Mr. Adams was 
chairmnn. On the 16th of August he reported that 
the messaije was the last of a series of executive 
measures, the result of which liad been to defeat and 
nullify the whole action of the legislative authority of 
the Union upon the most important interests of the 
nation ; — that, at the accession of the late President 
Harrison, the revenue and the credit of the country 
were so completely disordered, that a suffering people 
had commanded a change in the administration ; and 
the elections throughout the Union had placed in both 
houses of Congress mnjorities, the natund exponents 
of the principles which it was the will of the people 
should be substituted instead of those which had 
brought the country to a condition of sucli wretched- 
ness and shame ; — that there was n perfect harmony 



368 MEMOIR OP JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

between the chosen President of the people and this 
majority ; but that, by an inscrutable decree of Prov- 
idence, the chief of the people's choice, in harmony 
with whose principles the majorities of both houses 
had been constituted, was laid low in death. A suc- 
cessor to the office had assumed the title, with totally 
different principles, who, though professing to har- 
monize with the principles of his immediate predeces- 
sor, and with the majorities in both houses of Congress, 
soon disclosed his diametrical opposition to them. 

The report then proceeds to show the several devel- 
opments of this new and most unfortunate condition of 
the general government, effected by " a system of con- 
tinual and unrelenting exercise of executive legisla- 
tion, — by the alternate gross abuse of constitutional 
power, and bold assumption of powers never vested in 
him by any law, — resulting in four several Aetoes, 
which, in the course of fifteen months, had suspended 
the legislation of the Union. It then states and com- 
ments upon the reasons assigned by the President for 
returning this bill to the House of Representatives, 
with his objections to it, as specified in the veto mes- 
sage referred to this committee ; and, after a rigid 
analysis and course of argument, pronounces them 
"feeble, inconsistent, and unsatisfactory;" after 
which the report proceeds : 

"They perceive that the whole legislative power of the 
Union has been, for the last fifteen months, with regard to the 
action of Congress upon measures of vital importance, in a 
state of suspended animation, strangled by tlie five times 
repeated stricture of the executive cord. They observe that, 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 3C9 

under these unexampled obstructions to tlie exercise of their 
high and h'gitiniate duties, they have hitlierto i)r<'scrved the 
most respectiul forbearance towards tin? Executive Cliief: tliat 
Aviiile he has time after time annulled, by the mere act of his 
will, their commission from the people to enact laws f«jr the 
common welfare, they have forborne even the expressinn f>f 
tlieir resentment for tlicse multiplied insults and injuries 
They believed they had a high destiny to fullil, by admiuistcr- 
iug to the people, in the form of law, remedies for the sull'er- 
ings which they had too long endured. The will of one man 
lias frustrated all their labors, and prostrated all their powers. 
The maj\)rity of the committee believe that the case has 
occurred, in the annals of our Union, contemplated by the 
founders of the constitution, by the grant to the House of 
Representatives of the power to impeach the President of the 
United States ; but they are aware that the resort to that 
expedient might, in the present condition of public affairs, 
prove abortive. They see the irreconcilable dilTerence of opin- 
ion and of action between the legislative and executive depart- 
ments of the government is but sympathetic with the same 
discordant views and feelings among the people. To them 
alone the final issue of the struggle must be left. In sorrow 
and mortification, under the failure of all their labors to redeem 
the honor and prosperity of their country, it is a cheering con- 
solation to them that the termination of their own official 
existence is at hand ; that they are even now about to return 
to receive the sentence of their constituents upon themselves; 
that the legislative power of the Union, crippled and disabled 
as it may now be, is about to pass, renovated and revivified 
by the will of the people, into other hands, upon whom will 
devolve the task of providing that remedy for'the public dis- 
tempers which their own honest and agoni/.iiig energies have 
in vain endeavored to supply. 

" The power of the present Congress to enact laws essential 
to the welfare of the people has been struck with apoplexy by 
the executive hand. Submissicm to his will is the only condi- 
tion upon which he will permit them to act. For the enact- 
ment of a measure, earnestly recommended by himsrlf, he for- 

24 



370 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

bids their action, unless coupled with a condition declared by 
himself to be on a subject so totally different that he will no.t 
suffer them to be coupled in the same law. With that condi- 
tion Congress cannot comply. In this state of things he has 
assumed, as the committee fully believe, the exercise of the 
whole legislative power to himself, and is levying millions of 
money upon the people, without any authority of law. But 
the final decision of this question depends neither upon legis- 
lative nor executive, but upon judicial authority ; nor can the 
final decision of the Supreme Court upon it be pronounced 
before the close of the present Congress. In the mean time, 
the abusive exercise of the constitutional power of the Presi- 
dent to arrest the action of Congress upon measures vital to 
the welfare of the people has wrought conviction upon the 
minds of a majority of the committee that the veto power 
itself must be restrained and modified by an amendment of 
the constitution itself; a resolution for which they accordingly 
herewith respectfully report." 

The report was signed by ten members of the com 
mittee, including the chairman. The resolution with 
which it closed provided for submitting to the States 
a proposed modification of the constitution, by sub- 
stituting the words "majority of the whole number," 
instead of the words "two thirds," by which the 
power of the House of Kepresentatives to pass a law, 
notwithstanding the veto of the President, is at 
present restricted. 

The report. was agreed to in the house by a majority 
of one hundred ayes to ninety nays, and the resolution 
itself passed by a majority of ninety-eight ayes to 
ninety nays ; but the constitution, in such cases, 
requiring two thirds majority, it was of consequence 
rejected. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 371 

In November, 1842, Mr. Adams delivered a lecture 
before the Franklin Lyceum, at Providence, Rhddo 
^ Island, on the Social Compact, in which lie enters 
into "an examination of the principles of dcniocracy, 
aristocracy, and universal suffrage, as exempliricd in 
a historical review of the present constitutiuu vi' the 
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, with some notice of 
the origin of human government, and remarks on the 
theories of divine right, as maintained by Ilobbes 
and Sir Robert Filraer, on one side, and by Sydney, 
Locke, Montesquieu, and Rousseau, on the other." 

He shows, from the history of Massachusetts, that 
the fundamental principle asserted in the fifth article 
of our declaration of rights, that all power resides 
originally in the people, is derived from the above- 
named writers, and explains how this power has been 
practically exercised by the people of that state. 
The assertion of Rousseau, that the social compact 
can be formed only by unanimous consent, because 
the rule itself that a majority of votes shall prevail 
can only be established by agreement, that is, by 
compact, Mr. Adams controverts, maintaining in oppo- 
sition to it that the social compact constituting the 
body-politic is, and by the law of nature must be, 
a compact not merely of individuals, but of families. 
On this view of the subject he largely animadverts. 
The philosophical examination of the foundations of 
civil society, of human governments, and of the rights 
and duties of man, he views as among the conse 
quences of the Protestant Reformation. The question 
raised by Martin Luther involved the whole theory of 



372 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

the rights of individual man, paramount to all human 
authority. The talisman of human rights dissolved 
the spell of political as well as of ecclesiastical, 
power. The Calvinists of Geneva and the Puritans 
of England contested the right of kings to prescribe 
articles of faith to their people, and this question 
necessarily drew after it the general question of the 
origin of all human government. In search of its 
principle, Hobbes, a royalist, affirmed that the state 
of nature between man and man was a state Df war, 
whence it followed that government originated in 
conquest. This theory is directly opposite to that 
of Jesus Christ. It cuts the gordian knot with the 
sword, extinguishes all the rights of man, and makes 
fear the corner-stone of government. It is the only 
theory upon which slavery can be justified, as con- 
formable to the law of nature. This is Sir John 
Falstaff's law, when, speaking of Justice Shallow, 
he says, "If the young dace be a bait for the old 
pike, I see no reason in the law of nature why I 
may not snap at him." Sir Robert Filmer, by a 
theory far more plausible, though not more sound, 
than that of Hobbes, derived the origin of human 
government from the Scriptures of the Old Testa- 
ment, from the grant of the earth to Adam, and 
afterwards to Noah. 

But the vital error of Filmer was in assuming 
that the natural authority of the father over the child 
was either permanent or unlimited ; and still more 
that the authority of the husband over the wife was 
unlimited. Sir Robert Filmer did not perceive that 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 373 

by the laws of nature and of God every individual 
human being is born with rights which no other indi- 
vidual, or combination of individuals, can take away ; 
that all exercise of human authority nmst be under 
the limitation of right and wrong ; and that all despotic 
power over human beings is exercised in defiance of the 
laws of nature and of God — all. Sir John FalstalV's 
law of nature between the young dace and the old 
pike. 

The history of Filmer's work was remarkable. 
It was composed and published in the heat of the 
struggle between King Charles the First and the 
Commons of England, which terminated in the over- 
throw of the monarchy, and in the death of King 
Charles upon the scaffold. It w\as the theory of 
government on which the cause of the house of Stuart 
was sustained. No man can be surprised that such 
a cause was swept away by a moral and political 
whirlwind; that it carried with it all the institutions 
of civil society, so that its march was a Avild desola- 
tion. James, by relying on the principles of Fil- 
mer's theory, fell back into the arms of the Church of 
Rome, and vainly struggled to turn back the tide of 
religious reformation, and revive the divine right of 
kings, and passive obedience, and non-resistance. The 
republican spirit had slumbered on the w^hite cliffs of 
Albion, and in his sleep, like the man-mountain in 
Lilliput, had been pinned down to the earth by tlie 
threads of a spider's w^eb for cords. On the first reiip- 
pearance of Filmer's book, he awoke, nnd, like the 
strong man in Israel, at the cost of his own life, shook 



374 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

down the temple of Dagon, and buried himself and 
the Philistines again under its ruins. 

The discourses of John Locke concerning govern- 
ment demolished while they immortalized the work 
of Filmer, whose name and book are now remem- 
bered only to be detested. But the first principles 
of morals and politics, which have long been set- 
tled, acquire the authority of self-evident truths, 
which, when first discussed, may have been vehe- 
mently and portentously contested. John Locke, a 
kindred soul to Algernon Sydney, seven years after 
his death published an elaborate system of govern- 
ment, in which he declares the "false principles and 
foundation of Sir Robert Filmer and his followers are 
detected and overthrown." Subsequently, he pub- 
lished an essay concerning the true original extent 
and end of civil government. "The principles," 
says Mr. Adams, "of Sydney and Locke constitute 
the foundation of the North American Declaration of 
Lidependence ; and, together with the subsequent 
writings of Montesquieu and Rousseau, that of the 
constitution of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, 
and of the constitution of the United States." 
Neither of these constitutions separately, nor the two 
in combined harmony, can, without a gross and fraud- 
ulent perversion of language, be termed a Democracy. 
They are neither democracy, aristocracy, nor monar- 
chy. They form together a mixed government, com- 
pounded not only of the three elements of democracy, 
aristocracy, and monarchy, but with a fourth added 
element, Confederacy. The constitution of the United 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. oTT) 



States when adopted was so far fruiii being con- 
sidered as a democracy, that Patrick Henry charged 
it, in the Virginia Convention, with an awful s(iuint- 
ing towards monarchy. The tenth naiuhcr of I lie 
Federalist, written by James Madison, i.s an elab- 
orate and unanswerable essay upon the vital and radi- 
cal difi'erence between a democracy and a republic. 
But it is impossible to disconnect the relation between 
names and things. When the anti-federal party 
dropped the name of Republicans to assume that of 
Democrats, their principles underwent a corresponding 
metamorphosis ; and they are now the most devoted 
and most obsequious champions of executive power — 
the very life-guard of the conunandor of the armies 
and navies of this Union. The name of Democracy 
was assumed because it was discovered to be very 
taking among the multitude ; yet, after all, it is but 
the investment of the multitude Avilh absolute power. 
The constitutions of the United States and of the 
Commonwealth of ;Massachusctts are both the work of 
the people — one of the Union, the other of the State 
— not of the whole people by the phantom of univer- 
sal suffrage, but of the whole people by that portion 
of them capable of contracting for the whole. Tbcy 
are not democracy, nor aristocracy, nor monarchy, 
but a compound of them all, of which democracy is 
the oxygen, or vital air, too pure in itself for human 
respiration, but which in the union of other elements, 
equally destructive in themselves and less pure, 
forms that moral and political atmosphere in which 
we live, and move, and have our being. 



576 MEMOIR OP JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

The preceding abstract, given almost wholly in the 
language of Mr. Adams, shows the general drift of 
this characteristic essay. 

On the 17th of September, 1842, a convention of 
delegates from the district he represented received 
Mr. Adams at .^.i^aintree, and expressed their thanks 
for his services on the floor of Congress, especially 
for his fidelity in their defence "against every attempt 
of Southern representatives and their Northern allies 
to sacrifice at the altar of slavery the freedom of 
speech and the press, the right of petition, the pro- 
tection of free labor, and the immunities and privi- 
leges of Northern citizens." Mr. Adams, in reply, 
after expressing his sensibility at their unabated con- 
fidence in the integrity of his intentions, and in his 
capacity to serve them, declared that it had been his 
endeavor to discharge all the duties of his station 
" faithfully and gratefully to them; faithfully to our 
native and beloved Commonwealth ; faithfully to our 
whole common country, the North American Union ; 
faithfully to the world of mankind, in every quarter 
of the globe, and under every variety of condition or 
complexion; faithfully to that creator, God, who rules 
the world in justice and mercy, and to whom our final 
account must be made up by the standard of those 
attributes." He then proceeded to state, that on 
receiving their invitation to attend that meeting, it 
had been his intention to avail himself of the oppor- 
tunity to unfold to them the professions, princi 
pies, and practices, of the federal administration of 
these United States, under the successive Presidents 



f) ^ PT 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 6il 

invested with executive power, from the day when ho 
took his seat as their representative in Cuugress to 
the then present hour. 

" I trusted it would be in my power to present to your con- 
templation, not only the outward and ostensible indications 
of federal policy, proclainKul and trumpeted abroad as tliu 
maxims of the Jackson, Van Buren, and 'Jyler administrations, 
but to lay bare their secret purposes, and never yet divulged 
designs for the future government or dissolution of tliis Union. 

"Further reflection convinced nn; tliat tliis exposition 
V70uld require more time than you could possibly devote to one 
meeting to hear me. My friend and colleague, Mr. Appleton, 
has, in an answer to an invitation of his constituents to a pub« 
lie dinner, lifted a corner of the veil, and opened a glance at 
the monstrous and horrible object beneath it ; but South Caro- 
lina nullification itself, with its appendages of separation, 
secession, and the forty-bale theory, was but the struggles of 
Quixotism dreaming itself Genius, to erect on the basis of 
state sovereignty a system for seating South Carolina slavery 
on the throne of this Union in the event of success ; or of 
severing the present Union, and instituting, with a tier of 
embryo Southern States to be wrested from the dismember- 
ment of Mexico, a Southern slaveholding confederation to 
balance the free Republic of the North. 

" ' The passage,' says Mr. Appleton, ' of the revenue bill 
imposing discriminating duties with a view to the protection 
and encouragement of American industry, is, under the cir- 
cumstances, an event of the very highest importance. Not- 
withstanding the system had been formerly estal>lished in 
1816, and fortified by succeeding legislation ; notwithstand- 
ing its success in the development of our resources and the 
establishment of manufactures and arts, surpassing the expect- 
ation of the most sanguine ; notwithstanding the immense 
investments of capital made on the faith of the national legisla- 
tion inviting such ajjplication, the attempt was seriously enter- 
tained of breaking down this whole system, with a reckless 



378 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

disregard of consequences, either in the wanton destruction 
of capital, or, what is far more important, in the general paraly- 
sis of the industry of the country, TJie origin of this attempt 
may be traced to the mad ambition of certain politicians of 
South Carolina, who, in 1832, formed the project of a Southern 
Confederacy, severed from the rest of the Union, with that state 
for its centre, as affording more security to the slave states for 
their peculiar institutions than exist under the general government. 
" ' This project led to the invention of a theory of political 
economy, which was maintained with an ingenuity and perse- 
verance worthy of a better cause, founded on the assumption 
that all imports are, in effect, direct taxes upon exports. So 
indefatigable were the promulgators of this theory, that the 
whole South was made to believe that a protective tariff was 
a system of plunder levied upon their productions of cotton, 
rice, and tobacco, which constituted the bulk of our exports 
to foreign markets.' " 

Mr. Adams then proceeds to state that the principles 
of nullification were never more inflexibly maintained, 
never more inexorably pursued, than they had been 
by all that portion of the South which had given them 
countenance, from the day of the death of William 
Henry Harrison to the present , and that nullification 
is the creed of the executive mansion at Washington, 
the acting President's conscience, and the woof of all 
his vetoes. 

" Nullification," he adds, " portentous and fatal 
as it is to the prospects and welfare of this Union, 
is not the only instrument of Southern dominf^tion 
wielded by the executive arm at Washington. The 
dismemberment of our neighboring republic of Mex- 
ico, and the acquisition of an immense portion of her 
territories, was a gigantic and darling project of 




MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 379 

Andrew Jackson, and is another instrument wielded fur 

the same purpose. 

'"' ' ' t 

" Within five weeks after the proclamation of tlie constitutkJTT^ 
of the Republic of Texas followed the battle of San Jacinto ; and ' 
from that day the struggles of the Southern politicians, who 
ruled the councils of this nation, were for upwards of two years 
utiremitting, and unrestrained by any principles of lienor, hon- i 
esty, and truth : openly avowed, and audaciously proclaimed, 
whenever they dared ; clandestinely pursued, under delusive 
masks and false colors, whenever the occasion required. 

" No sooner was the event of the battle of San Jacinto 
known than memorials and resolutions, from various parts of 
the Union, were poured in upon Congress, calling upon that 
body for the immediate recognition of the independence of the 
Republic of Texas. Many of these memorials and resolutions 
came from the free states, and one of them from the Legisla- 
ture of Connecticut, then blindly devoted to the rank Southern, 
sectional policy of the Jackson administration, by that infatu- 
ation of Northern sympathy with Southern interests, which 
Mr. Appleton points out to our notice, and the true purposes 
of which had already been sufficiently divulged in an address 
of Mr. Clement C. Clay to the Legislature of Alabama. But 
there was another more hidden impulse to this extreme solici- 
tude for the recognition of the independence of Texas work- 
ing in the free states, quite as ready to assume the mask and 
cap of liberty as the slave-dealing champions of the rights of 
man. The Texan land and liberty jobbers had spread the con- 
tagion of their land-jobbing traffic all over the free states 
throughout the Union. Laud-jobbing, stock-jobbing, slave- 
jobbing, rights-of-man-jobbing, were all, hand in hand, sweep- 
ing over the land like a hurricane. The banks wore plunging 
into desperate debts, preparing for a universal suspension of 
specie payment, under the shelter of legislative protection to 
flood the country with irredeemable paper. Gambling specu- 
lation was the madness of the day ; and, in the wide-spread 
ruin which we are now witnessing as the last stage of thia 
moral pestilence, Texan bonds and Texan lands form no small 



3S0 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

portion of the fragments from the wreck of money corporations 
contributing their assets of two or three cents to the dollar. 
All these interests furnished vociferous declaimers for the 
recognition of Texan independence." 

Mr. Adams next states the proceedings of Congress 
on this subject during the whole of the residue of the 
Jackson administration, terminating with the recogni- 
tion by Congress of the independence of Texas. At 
this period Mr. .Van Buren—-_a Northern man with 
Southern principles — assumed the functions of Presi- 
dent of the United States. But the recognition of the 
independence of Texas availed nothing without her 
annexation to the United States. In October, 1837, 
a formal proposition from the Republic of Texas for 
such annexation was communicated to Congress, with 
the statement that it had been declined by Mr. Van 
Buren. Bat the passion for the annexation of Texas 
was not to be so disconcerted. Memorials for and 
against its annexation poured into Congress, and were 
referred to the Committee on Foreign Affiiirs. "In 
the debate which arose from their report," says Mr. 
Adams, "I exposed the whole system of duplicity 
and perfidy towards Mexico, which had marked the 
Jackson administration from its commencement to its 
leiose. It silenced the clamors for the annexation of 
Texas to this Union for three years, till the catastro- 
phe of the Van Buren administration. The people of 
the free states were lulled into the belief that the 
whole project was abandoned, and that they should 
hear no more of the slave-trade cravings for the an- 
nexation of Texas. Had Harrison lived, they would 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 381 

have heard no more of it to this day. But no sooner 
was John Tyler installed into the President's house 
than nullification, and Texas, and war with Me,\ico, 
rose again upon the surface, with eye steadily fixed 
upon the polar star of Southern slave-dealing suprem- 
acy in the government of the Union." 

Mr. Adams then comments upon the history of tlio 
Sajnta Fe expedition, which was fitted o«t in the sum- 
mer of 1841, shortly after the accession of Mr. Tyler, 
by the then President of Texas, having been orig- 
inated and concerted within these states, and carried 
on chiefly by citizens of the United States. That it 
was known, countenanced, and encouraged, at the 
presidential house, was, said Mr. Adams, more than 
questioned ; for, while it was on foot, and before it 
was known, frequent hints were given in public ji»ur- 
nals, moved by Executive impulse, that at the coming 
session the annexation of Texas was to be introduced 
by a citizen of the highest distinction. " But the Tex- 
an expedition was ill-starred. Instead of taking and 
rioting upon the beauty and booty of Santa Fc, they 
were all captured themselves, without even the glory of 
putting a price on their lives. They surrendered \vi(li- 
out firing a gun." The failure of this expedition dis- 
comfited the war faction in Congress, and injured for 
a moment, and only for a moment, the project to wliich 
Southern nullification clung with the grasp of death. 

Mr. Adams next proceeds to exhibit the evidence to 
show "the participation of the administration at Wash- 
ington with this incursion of banditti from Texas 
against Santa Fe," and to explain "the legislative 



382 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

exploit" by wliicli the treasury of the United States 

was made to contribute to "the dismemberment of 

Mexico, and the annexation of an immense portion 

of its territory to the slave representation of the 

Union." The internal evidence he regarded as irre- 

/sistible that "the expedition against Santa Fe was 

/ planned within your boundaries, and committed to the 

; execution of your citizens, under the shelter of Mexi- 

ycan banners and commissions.'^ 

In the subsequent portion of this address Mr. Adams, 
regarding the principles of nullification as being at the 
basis of Mr. Tyler's whole policy, enters at large into 
its nature, and thus speaks of its origin and associa- 
tion with democracy : 

" Let me advert again to the important disclosure in the 
letter of Mr. Appleton to his constituents, from which I have 
taken the liberty <jf reading to you an extract. Nullification 
was generated in the hot-bed of slavery. It drew its first 
breath in the land where the meaning of the word democracj'' 
is that a majority of the people are the goods and chattels of 
the minority ; that more than one half of the people are not 
men, women, and children, but things, to be treated by their 
owners, not exactly like dogs and horses, but like tables, 
chairs, and joint-stools ; that they are not even fixtures to the 
soil, as in countries where servitude is divested of its most 
hideous features, — not even beings in the mitigated degrada- 
tion from humanity of beasts, or bii'ds, or creeping things, — 
but destitute not only of the sensibilities of our own race of 
men, but of the sensations of all animated nature. That is 
the native land of nullification, and it is a theory of constitu- 
tional law worthy of its origin. Democracy, pure democracy, 
has at least its foundation in a generous theory of human 
rights. It is founded on the natural equality of mankind. It 
is the corner-stone of the Christian religion. It is the first 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 383 

element of all lawful government \ipon earth. Democracy i8 
self-government of the community by the conjoint will <.f the 
majority of numbers. What communion, what afllnity, can 
there be between that principle and nnlliliuation, which is the 
despotism of a corporation — unlimited, imrestrained, Kuvcrciijn 
power ? Never, never was amalgamation so preposterous and 
absurd as that of nullification and democracy." 

Of the hostility of nullification to the prosperity of 
the free states he thus speaks : 

"The root of the doctrine of nullification is that if the inter- 
nal improvement of the country should be left to the legislative 
management of the national government, and the proceeds of 
the sales of the public lands should be applied as a perpetual 
anS self accumulating fund for that purpose, the blessings 
unceasingl}'^ showered upon the people by this process would 
so grapple the affections of the people to the national author- 
ity, that it would, in process of time, overshadow that of the 
state governments, and settle the preponderancy of power in 
the free states ; and then the undying worm of conscience 
twinges with terror for the fate of (he peculiar inslilulioa. 
Slavery stands aghast at the prospective promotion of the gen- 
eral welfare, and flies to nullification for defence against tho 
energies of freedom, and the inalienable rights of man." 

After stating and commenting upon the policy of 
General Jackson, as having for its object the " .li.s- 
membering of Mexico, and restoring slavery to Texas, 
and of surrounding the South with a girdle of .>^lave 
states, to eternize the blessings of the peculiar insti- 
tution, and spread them like a garment of praise over 
the whole North American Union," he ("\i)lained 
the effect of party divisions always operating in ibe 
United States, and tlie cliaracter of the several pro- 
portions of their power. Their results, in tending tc 



384 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

revive and strengthen slavery and the shive-trade, 
which Mr. Adams then foretohl, excited mekmcholy 
anticipations in the mind of every reflecting freeman. 
What was then prophecy is now history. 

" There are two different party divisions always operating 
in the House of Representatives of the United States, — one 
sectional, North and South, or, in other words, slave and free ; 
the other political — both sides of which have been known at 
different times by different names, but are now usually denom- 
inated Whigs and Democrats. The Southern or slave party, 
outnumbered by the free, are cemented together by a common, 
intense interest of property to the amount of twelve hun- 
dred millions of dollars in human beings, thje, very existence 
of 7which is neither allowed nor tolerated in the North. It is 
the opinion of many theoretical reasoners on the subject of 
government that, whatever may be its form, the ruling power 
of every nation is its property. Mr. Van Buren, in one of his 
messages to Congx-ess, gravely pointed out to them the anti- 
republican tendencies of associated wealth. Reflect now upon 
the tendencies of twelve huiuhed millions of dollars of asso- 
ciated wealth, directly represented in your national legislature 
by one hundred members, together with one hundred and forty 
members representing persons only — freemen, not chattels. 
Reflect, also, that this twelve hundred millions of dollars of 
property is peculiar in its character, and comes under a classi- 
fication once denominated by a Governor of Virginia property 
acquired by crime; that it sits uneasy upon the conscience of 
its owner ; that, in the purification of human virtue, and the 
progress of the Christian religion, it has become, and is daily 
becoming, more and more odious ; that Washington and Jef- 
ferson, themselves slav(!holders, living and dying, bore testi- 
mony against it ; that it was the dying remorse of John 
Randolph : that it is renounced and abjured by the supreme 
pontiff of the Roman Church, abolished with execration by 
the Mahometan despot of Tunis, shaken to its foundations 
by the imperial autocrat of all the Russias and the absolute 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 385 

monarch of Austria; — all, all bearing reluctant and extorted 
testimony to the self-evident truth that, by the laws (jf nature 
and nature's God, man cannot be the property of man. llccol- 
lect that the first cry of human feeling- against this unhallowed 
outrage upou human rights came from ourselves — from the 
Quakers of Pennsylvania ; that it passed from us to England, 
from England to France, and spread over the civilized world ; 
that, after struggling for nearly a century against the most 
sordid interests and most furious passions of man, it made its 
way at length into the Parliament, and ascended the throne, of 
the British Isles. The slave-trade was made piracy first by 
the Congress of the United States, and then by the Parliament 
of Great Britain. 

"But the curse fastened hy the progress of Christian char- 
ity and of human rights upon the African slave-trade could 
not rest there. If the African slave-trade was piracy, the 
coasting American slave-trade could not be innocent, nor 
could its aggravated turpitude be denied. In the sight of the 
same God who abhors the iniquity of the African slave-trade, 
neither the American slave-trade nor slavery itself can be held 
guiltless. From the suppression of the African slave-trade, 
therefore, the British Parliament, impelled by the irresistible 
influence of the British people, proceeded to point the battery 
of its power against slavery itself At the expense of one 
hundred millions of dollars, it abolished slavery, and emanci- 
pated all the slaves in the British transatlantic colonies ; and 
the government entered upon a system of negotioition with all 
the powers of the world for the ultimate' extinetio-n of slavery 
throughout the globe. 

"The utter and unqualified inconsistency of slavery, in any f /fi , 5* 'A 
of its forms, with the principles of the North American Revo- 
lution, and the Declaration of our Independence, had so forci- 
bly struck the Soutliern champions of our rights, that tlie abo- 
lition of slavery and the emancipation of slaves was a darling 
project of Thomas Jefferson from his first entrance into pul)lic 
life to the last years of his existence. But the associated 
wealth of the slaveholders outweighed the principles of the 
Revolution, and by the constitution of the United States a 

25 



o 



386 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

compromise was established between slavery and freedom. 
The extent of'the sacrifice of principle made by the North in 
this compromise can be estimated only by its practical effects. 
The principle is that the House of Representatives of the^— -, 
United States is a representation only of the persons and free- / 
dom of the North, and of the persons, property, and slavery, / 
of the South. Its practical operation has been to give tli^.- 
balance of power in the house, and in every department of the 
government, into the hands of the minority of numbers. For 
practical results look to the present composition of your gov- 
xT^' ernment in all its departments. The President of the United -.^ 
States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, \ 
are al! slaveholders. The Chief Justice and four out of tiio | 
nine Judges of the Supreme Court of the United States are / 
slaveholders. The commander-in-chief of your army and the^-^ 
general next in command are slaveholders. A vast majority 
of all the officers of your navy, from the highest to the lowest, 
are slaveholders. Of six heads of the executive departments, 
three are slaveholders ; securing thus, with the President, a 
majority in all cabinet consultations and executive councils. 
From the commencement of this century, upwards of forty 
years, the office of Chief Justice has always been held by 
slaveholders ; and when, upon the death of Judge Marshall, 
the two senior justices upon the bench were citizens of the 
free states, and unsurpassed in eminence of reputation both 
for learning in the law and for spotless integrity, they were 
both overlooked and overslaughed by a slaveholder, far infe- 
rior to either of them in reputation as a lawyer, and chiefly 
eminent for his obsequious servility to the usurpations of 
Andrew Jackson, for which this unjust elevation to the Su- 
preme Judicial bench was the reward. 

" As to the house itself, if an article of the constitution had 
prescribed, or a standing rule of the house had required, that 
no other than a slaveholder should ever be its Speaker, the 
regulation could not be more rigorously observed than it is by 
the compact movements of the slave representation in the 
house. Of the last six speakers of the house, including the 
present, every one has been a slaveholder. It is so much a 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 387 

TYiatter of course to sec such a person in iho cliair, that, if a 
Northern man but thinks of aspiring to the cliair, he iK only 
made a laughing-stock for the house. 

" With such consequences staring us in tlie face, what aro 
we to think when wo are told that the government of the 
United States is a democracy of numbers — a government by 
a majority of the people ? Do you not see that the one hiin- 
dred representatives of persons, property, and slavery, march- 
ing^xi solid phalanx upon every question of interest to their 
coTistitirents, will always outnumber the one hundred and furty 
representatives only of persons and freedom, scattered as their 
votes will always be by conflicting interests, prejudices, and 
passions ? 

" But this is not all. The second party division in the house 

to which"! have alluded is political, and known at present 
by the names of Whigs and Democrats, or Locofocos. The 
latter are remarkable for an exquisite tenderness of aflec- 
tion for the peojyle, and especially for the poor, provided tlu-ir 
skins are white, and against the rich. But it is no less remark- 
able that the princely slaveholders of the South are among the 
most thoroughgoing of the Democrats ; and their alliance witli 
the Northern Democracy is one of the cardinal points of their 
policy." 

The residue of this address is devoted to a searcliing 
and severe examination of the whole course of Presi- 
dent Tyler's administration, showing that "the sec- 
tional division of parties — in other words, the conflict 
between freedom and slavery — is the axle round 
which the administration of the national government 
revolves." "The political divisions with him, ;md 
with all Southern statesmen of his stamp, an^ mere 
instruments of power to purchase auxiliary support to 
the cause of slavery even from the freemen of the 

North." 

In closing this most illustrative address, he apolo 



388 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

gizes to his constituents for any language he may have 
used in debate which might be deemed harsh or acri- 
monious, and asks them to consider the adversaries 
with whom he had to contend ; the virulence and ran- 
cor, unparalleled in the history of the country, with 
which he had been pursued ; and to remember that, 
" for the single offence of persisting to assert the right 
of the people to petition, and the freedom of speech 
and of the press, he had been twice dragged before 
the house to be censured and expelled." One of his 
assailants, Thomas F. Marshall, had declared, in an 
address to his constituents, his motives for the past, and 
his purposes for the future, in the following words : 

"Though petitions to dissolve the Union be poured in by 
thousands, I shall not again interfere on the floor of Congress, 
since the house have virtually declared that there is nothing 
contemptuous or improper in offering them, and are willing 
again to afford Mr. Adams an opportunity of sweeping all the 
strings of discord that exist in our country. I acted as I 
thought for the best, being sincerely desirous to check that 
man, who, if he could be removed from the councils of the 
nation, or silenced on the exasperating subject to which he 
seems to have devoted himself, none other, I believe, could be 
found hardy enough, or bad enough, to Jill his place. ^' 

" Besides this special and avowed malevolence 
against me," Mr. Adams remarks, — *'this admitted y 
(X ^ purpose to expel or silence me, for the sake of brow- 
' beating all other members of the free representation, 
(^ -" by establishing over them the reign of terror, — a pecu- 
liar system of tactics in the house has been observed 
towards me, by silencers of the slave representation 
and their allies of the Northern Democracy." 



k 



^^ 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 389 

The system of tactics to which he alhidcs was, first, 
to turn him out of the office of chuirinuu uf the Com- 
mittee on Foreign Affairs, and, this failing, to induce 
a majority of the servile portion of that committee to 
refuse any longer to serve with him ; their purposo 
being exactly that of Mr. Marshall, to remove him from 
the councils of the nation, or to silence him, for llio 
sake of intimidating all others by "an ostentatious 
display of a common determination not to serve with 
any man who would not submit to the gag-rule, and 
would persist in presenting abolition petitions." Mr. 
Adams then illustrates the powerful effect of such 
movements to overawe members from the free states. 

"Another practice," he observed, "of this com- 
munion of Southern, sectional, and Locofoco antip- 
athy against me is, that I never can take part in any 
debate upon an important subject, be it only upon 
a mere abstraction, but a pack opens upon me of 
personal invective in return. Language has no word 
of reproach or railing that is not hurled at me ; and 
the rules of the house allow me no opportunity to 
reply till every other member of the house has had 
his turn to speak, if he pleases. By another rule every 
debate is closed by a majority whenever they get 
weary of it. The previous question, or a motion to 
lay the subject on the table, is interposed, and I am 
not allowed to reply to 'the grossest falsehoods and 
most invidious misrepresentations." 

This course of party tactics Mr. Adams exliiltits 
by a particular narrative of the misrepresentation to 
ivhich he had been subjected, closing his statement 



890 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

with the following acknowledgment : "I must do 
many of the members of the House of Representa- 
tives from the South the justice to say that their 
treatment of me is dictated far more by the passions 
and prejudices of their constituents than by their own. 
Were it not for this curse of slavery, there are some 
of them with whom I should be on terms of the most 
intimate and confidential friendship. There are many 
for whom I entertain high esteem, respect, and affec- 
tionate attachment. There are among them those who 
have stood by me in my trials, and scorned to join in 
the league to sacrifice me as a terror to others." 

In September, 1842, at the invitation of the Norfolk 
County Temperance Society, Mr. Adams delivered at 
Qiiincy an address, — not perhaps in coincidence with 
the prevailing expectations of that society, but in 
perfect unison with his own characteristic spirit of 
independence. He instituted an inquiry into the 
effect of the principles of total abstinence from the 
use of spirituous liquors, the administration of pledges, 
or, in bther words, the contracting of engagements by 
vows ; and examined the whole subject with reference 
to the essential connection which exists between tem- 
perance and religion. In the course of his argument 
he maintains that the moral principles inculcated by 
the whole tenor of the Old Testament, with regard to 
temperance, are, — 1. That the te?nperate use of wine 
is innocent, and without sin. 2. That excess in it is 
a heinous sin. 3. That the voluntary assumption of 
a vow or pledge of total abstinence is an effort of 
exalted virtue, and highly acceptable in the sight 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 301 

of God. 4. That the habit of excess in I In- u>f of 
wine is an object of unqualified abhurrciiec aipl dis- 
gust. He concluded with a warning to his fellow- 
citizens to " stand fast in the liberty whcnnvith Christ 
has made you free, and be not entangled again with 
the yoke of bondage;" and, after applauding tho 
members of the Norfolk County Temperance Society 
for their attempts to suppress intemperance, dcchir'mg 
it a holy work, and invoking the blessing of Heaven 
.on their endeavors, he bids tliom "go forth as mis- 
sionaries of Christianity among their own kindred. 
Go, with the commendation of the Saviour to his 
apostles when he first sent them forth to redeem the 
world : ' Be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harm- 
less as doves.* In the ardor of your zeal for moral 
reform forget not the rights of personal freedom. All 
excess is of the nature of intemperance. Self-govern- 
ment is the foundation of all our political and social 
institutions ; and it is by self-government alone that 

the laws of temperance can be enforced Abovo 

all, let no tincture of party politics be mingled 
with the pure stream from the fountain of temper- 
ance." 

The spirit of this address, and the intimate knowl- 
edge of the Scriptures Mr. Adams possessed, will be 
illustrated by the following extract : 

" Throughout the whole of the Old Testament the vine is 
represented as one of the most precious blessings bestowed by 
the Creator upon man. In the incomparable fable of Jotham, 
when he lifted up his voice on the summit of Mount Gerizim, 
and cried to the men of Shcchem, ' Hearken unto mo, ye 



392 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



t 



men of Sliechem, that God may hearken unto you,' he told 
them that when the trees of the forest went forth to anoint 
them a king to reign over them, they offered the crown suc- 
cessively to the olive-tree, the fig-tree, and the vine. They 
all declined to accept the royal dignity ; and when it came to 
the turn of the vine to assign the reasons for his refusal, he 
said, ' Should I leave my 2vine, which cheereth God and man, 
and go to be promoted over the trees ? ' In the one hundred 
and fourth Psalm, — that most magnificent of all descriptions 
of the glory, the omnipotence, and the goodness of the Cre- 
ator, God, — wine is enumerated among the richest of his 
blessings bestowed upon man. ' lie causeth the grass to 
grow,' says the Psalmist, ' for the cattle, and herb for the 
service of man, that he maj' bring forth food out of the earth, 
and wine that maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make 
his face to shine, and bread that strengtheneth man's heart.' 

" But, while wine was thus classed among the choicest com- 
forts and necessaries of life, the cautions and injunctions 
against the inordinate use of it are repeated and multiplied in 
every variety of form. ' Wine is a mocker,' says Solomon 
(Prov. 20: 1); 'strong drink is raging; and whosoever is 
deceived thereby is not wise.' ' He that loveth pleasure shall 
be a poor man ; he that loveth wine and oil shall not be rich.' 
(21: IT.) 'Who hath woe? who hath sorrow? who hath 
contentions ? who hath babbling ? who hath wounds without 
cause ? who hath redness of eyes ? They that tarry long at 
the wine ; they that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou 
upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth its color in the 
cup, when it moveth itself aright,' — say, like sparkling Cham- 
pagne. — 'At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like 
an adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange wonders, and thine 
heart shall utter perverse things ; yea, thou shalt be as he that 
lieth down in the midst of the sea, or as he that lieth on the 
top of a mast. They have stricken me, shalt thou say, and I 
was not sick ; they have beaten me, and I felt it not : when 
shall I awake? I will seek it yet again.' Never was so 
exquisite a picture of drunkenness and the drunkard painted 
by the hand of man. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 303 

"Yet in all this there is no interdict upi)ii the use of wine. 
The caution and the precept are against excess." 

On the 29th of May, 1843, Mr. Athmis deUvere.l 
before the Massachusetts Historical Society a tlis- 
course in celebration of the Second Centennial Anni- 
versary of the New England Confederacy (tf 104:]. 
This work is characterized by that breadtii and dcjith 
of research for which he was distinguished and euii- 
nently qualified. It includes traces of the early set- 
tlements of Virginia, New England, Pennsylvania, 
and New York ; of the causes of each, and tlie s[)irit 
in which they were made and conducted, and of the 
principles which they applied in their intercourse with 
the aboriginals of the forest. He then proceeds to 
give an account of the confederation of the four New 
England colonies, Plymouth, Massachusetts, Connect- 
icut, and New Haven, in 1043, with appropriate 
statements of the principles and conduct of the found- 
ers of each settlement, and of the character and 
motives of the leaders of each of them. 

The origin, motives, and objects of that confedera- 
tion, he explains ; analyzing the distribution of power 
between the commissioners of the whole confederacy 
and among the separate governments of the colonies, 
and showing that it combined the same identical 
principles with those which gathered and united the 
thirteen English colonies as the prelude to the Revo- 
lution which severed them forever from thoir national 
connection with Great Britain ; and that (he New 
England Confederacy of 1643 was the model ami pro- 
totype of the North American Confederacy of 1774. 



394 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

His sketch of the founder of the Colony of Rhode 
Island will give a general idea of the spirit and bear- 
ing of this discourse : 

" Roger Williams was a man who may be considered the very 
impersonation of a combined conscientious and contentious 
spirit. Born in the land of Sir Hugh Evans and Captain Flu- 
ellen, educated at the University of Oxford, at the very period 
when the monarchical Episcopal Church of England was purg- 
ing herself, as by fire, from the corruptions of the despotic 
and soul-degrading Church of Rome, he arrived at Boston in 
February, 1630, about half a year after the landing of the 
Massachusetts Colony of Governor Winthrop. lie was an 
eloquent preacher, stiff and self-confident in his opinions ; 
ingenious, powerful, and commanding, in impressing them 
upon others ; inflexible in his adherence to them ; and, by an 
inconsistency peculiar to religious enthusiasts, combining the 
most amiable and affectionate sympathies of the heart with the 
most repulsive and inexorable exclusions of conciliation, com- 
pliance, or intercourse, with his adversaries in opinion. 

" On his first arrival he went to Salem, and there soon made 
himself so acceptable by his preaching, that the people of Mr. 
Skelton's church invited him to settle with them as his col- 
league. But he had broached, and made no hesitation in 
maintaining, two opinions imminently dangerous to the very 
existence of the Massachusetts Colony, and certainly not 
remarkable for that spirit of charity or toleration upon which 
he afterwards founded his own government, and which now, 
in after ages, constitutes his brightest title to renown. The 
first of these opinions was that the royal charter to the Colony 
of Massachusetts was a nullity, because the King of England 
had no right to grant lands in foreign countries, which belonged 
of right to their native inhabitants. This opinion struck di- 
rectly at all right of property held under the authority of the 
royal charter, and, followed to its logical conclusions, would 
have proved the utter impotence of the royal charter to confer 
power of government, any more than it could convey property 
in the soil. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 305 

"Tho other opinion was that the Church of Boston was 
criminal for having omitted to make a public declaration of 
repentance for having held communion witli the Church of 
England before their emigration ; ami upon tliat ground he 
had refused to join in communion with the Church ol liowton. 

" By the subtlety and vehemence of hi.s persuasive powcra 
he had prevailed upon Endicott to look upon the cross of St 
George in the banners of England as a badge of idolatry, and 
to cause it actually to be cut out of the flag floating at the 
fort in Salem. The red cross of St. George in the national 
banner of England was a grievous and odious eye-sore to mul- 
titudes, probably to a great majority, of the Massachusetta 
colonists ; but, in the eyes of the government of the colony, 
it was the sacred badge of allegiance to the monarchy at 
home, already deeply jealous of the purposes and designs of 
the Puritan colony." 

On the 4th of July, 1843, Mr. Adams, in a letter 
addressed to the citizens of Bangor, in Maine, declin- 
ing their invitation to deliver an address on the 1st 
of August, the anniversary of British emancipation 
of slavery in the West Indies, thus expressed his 
views on that subject : 

"The extinction of slavery from the face of the earth is a 
problem, moral, political, religious, which at this moment rocks 
the foundations of human society throughout the regions of 
civilized man. It is indeed notliing more nor less than the 
consummation of the Christian religion. It is only as immor- 
tal beings that all mankind can in any sense be said to be \<>>vn 
equal ; and when the Declaration of Independence affirms as 
a self-evident truth that all men are born equal, it is precisely 
the same as if the affirmation had been that all m.-n are born 
with immortal souls ; for, take away from man his soul, tho 
immortal spirit that is within him, and he would be a mere 
tamable beast of the field, and, like others of his kind, would 



306 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

become the property of his tamer. Hence it is, too, that, by 
the law of nature and of God, man can never be made the 
property of man. And herein consists the fallacy with which 
the holders of slaves often delude themselves, by assuming- 
that the test of property is human law. The soul of one man 
cannot by human law be made the property of another. The 
owner of a slave is the owner of a living corpse ; but he is 
not the owner of a man." 

In illustration of this principle he observes that 
" the natural equality of mankind, affirmed by the 
signers of the Declaration of Independence to be held 
up by them as self-evident truth, was not so held by 
their enemies. Great Britain held that sovereign 
power was unlimitable, and the natural equality of 
mankind was a fable. France and Spain had no sym- 
pathies for the rights of human nature. Vergennes 
plotted with Gustavus of Sweden the revolution in 
Sweden from liberty to despotism. Turgot, shortly 
after our Declaration of Independence, advised Louis 
Sixteenth that it was for the interest of France and 
Spain that the insurrection of the Anglo-American 
colonies should he suppressed. But none of them fore- 
saw or imagined what would be the consequence of 
the triumphant establishment in the continent of 
North America of an Anglo-Saxon American nation 
on the foundation of the natural equality of mankind, 
and the inalienable rights of man." 

Mr. Adams then states and reasons upon these 
consequences in Europe and the United States : the 
abolition of slavery by the judicial decision of the 
Supreme Court of Massachusetts, three years after the 
Declaration of Independence. Since that day there 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCV ADAMS. 307 

has not been a slave within thut state. The same 
principle is corroborated by the fact that the Dechir.-i- 
tion of Independence imputes shivery in Virginia tn 
George the Third, as one of the crimes which provcfl 
him to be a tyrant, unfit to rule a free people ; and 
that at least twenty slaveholders, if not thirty, among 
whom were George Washington and Thomas JuflVr- 
son, avowed abolitionists, were signers of that Dec- 
laration. 

He next states that " the result of the North Amer 
lean revolutionary war had prepared the minds of the 
people of the British nation to contemplate with calm 
composure the new principle engrafted upon the asso- 
ciation of the civilized race of man, the self-evident 
truth, the natural equality of mankind and the rights 
of man." He then introduces Anthony Benezet, a 
member of the society of Friends, and Granville 
Sharp, an English philanthropist, " blowing the single 
horn of human liberty and the natural e(|uality of 
mankind against the institution of slavery, practised 
from time immemorial by all nations, ancient ami 
modern ; supported by the denunciation of the trallic 
in slaves by the popular writers both in France and 
England, — by Locke, Addison, and Sterne, as well 
as by Raynal, Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Voltaire ; 
succeeded by the association of Thomas Clarkson and 
two or three Englishmen together, for the purpose of 
arraying the power of the British empire for the tottil 
abolition of slavery throughout the earth." The suc- 
cess of that association he next illustrates, — until this 
*' emanation of the Christian faith is now, under the 



Q 



98 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 



cross of St. George, overflowing from the white cliffs 
of Albion, and sweeping the slave-trade and slavery 
from the face of the terraqueous globe." lie pro 
ceeds : 

" People of that renowned island ! — children of the land of 
our forefathers! — proceed, proceed in this glorious career, till 
the whole earth shall be redeemed from the greatest curse that 
ever has afflicted the human race. Proceed until millions upon 
millions of your brethren of the human race, restored to the 
rights with which they were endowed by your and their Cre- 
ator, but of which they have been robbed by ruflSans of their 
own race, shall send their choral shouts of redemption to the 
skies in blessings upon your names. 0, with what pungent 
mortification and shame must I confess that in the transcend- 
ent glories of that day our names will not be associated with 
yours ! May Heaven in mercy grant that we may be spared 
the deeper damnation of seeing our names recorded, not among 
the liberators, but with the oppressors of mankind ! " 

After inquiring what we have done in the United 
States to support " the principle proclaimed to the 
world as that which was to be the vital spark of our 
existence as a community among the nations of the 
earth," and declaring that we have done nothing, he 
thus enumerates the proceedings which disqualify us 
from presuming to share in the festivities and unite in 
the songs of triumph of the 1st of August, and shows 
how little we have concurred with Great Britain in 
her attempts to break the chain of slavery. He in- 
quires into what we are doing : 

" Are we not suffering our own hands to be manacled, and 
our own feet to be fettered, with the chains of slavery ? Is it 
not enough to be told that, by a fraudulent perversion of Ian- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 309 

guage in the constitution of the TJiiitcd States, we have fulsl 
fied the constitution itself, by admitting into both the legislative 
and executive departments of the government an overwhelming 
representation of one species of property, to the exclusion of 
all others, and that the odious property in slaves ? 

"Is it not enough that, by this exclusive privilege of propn 
erty representation, confined to one section of the country, an 
irresistible ascendency in the action of the general government 
has been secured, not indeed to that section, but to an oligar- 
chy of slaveholders in that section — to the cruel oppression 
of the poor in that same section itself? Is it not enough that, 
by the operation of this radical iniquity in the organizutiun of 
the government, an immense disproportion of all ottiL'es, from 
the highest to the lowest, civil, military, naval, executive, and 
judicial, are held by slaveholders ? Have we not seen the 
sacred right of petition totally suppressed for the people of 
the free states during a succession of years, and is it not yet 
inexorably suppressed ? Have wo not seen, for the last twenty 
years, the constitution and solemn treaties with foreign nations 
trampled on by cruel oppression and lawless imprisonment of 
colored mariners in the Southern States, in cold-blooded defi- 
ance of a solemn adjudication by a Southern judge in the 
Circuit Court of the Union ? And is not this enough ? Have 
not the people of the free states been required to renounce for 
their citizens the right of habeas corpus and trial by jury : and, 
to coerce that base surrender of the only practical security to 
all personal rights, have not the slave-breeders, by state legis- 
lation, subjected to fine and imprisonment the colored citizens 
of the free states, for merely coming within their jurisdiction ? 
Have we not tamely submitted for years to the daily violation 
of the freedom of the post-office and of the press l>y a com- 
mittee of seal-breakers ? And have we not seen a sworn Tost- 
master-general formally avow that, though he could not license 
this cut-purse protection of the peculiar institution, the per- 
petrators of this highway robbery must justify themselves by 
the plea of necessity ? And has the pillory or the penitentiary 
been the reward of that Postmaster-general ? Have we not 
seen printing-presses destroyed ; halls erectc;d inr the promo- 



400 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

tion of human freedom levelled with the dust, and consumed 
by fire ; and wanton, unprovoked murder perpetrated with 
impunity, by slave-mongers ? Have we not seen human 
beings, made in the likeness of God, and endowed with immor- 
tal souls, burnt at the stake, not for their offences, but for 
their color ? Are not the journals of our Senate disgraced by 
resolutions calling for war, to indemnify the slave-pirates of 
the Enterprise and the Creole for the self-emancipation of 
their slaves ; and to inflict vengeance, by a death of torture, 
upon the heroic self-deliverance of Madison Washington ? 
Have we not been fifteen years plotting rebellion against our 
neighbor republic of Mexico, for abolishing slavery throughout 
all her provinces ? Have we not aided and abetted one of her 
provinces in insurrection against her for that cause ? And 
have we not invaded openly, and sword in hand, another of 
her provinces, and all to effect her dismemberment, and to add 
ten more slave states to our confederacy ? Has not the cry 
of war for the conquest of Mexico, for the expansion of rein- 
stituted slavery, for the robbery of priests, and the plunder of 
religious establishments, yet subsided ? Have the pettifog- 
ging, hair-splitting, nonsensical, and yet inflammatory bicker- 
ings about the right of search, pandering to the thirst for 
revenge in France, panting for war to prostrate the disputed 
title of her king — has the sound of this war-trumpet yet faded 
away upon our ears ? Has the supreme and unparalleled 
absurdity of stipulating by treaty to keep a squadron of eighty 
guns for five years without intermission upon the coast of 
Africa, to suppress the African slave-trade, and at the same 
time denying, at the point of the bayonet, the right of that 
squadron to board or examine any slaver all but sinking under 
a cargo of victims, if she but hoist a foreign flag — has this 
diplomatic bone been yet picked clean ? Or is our indirect 
participation in the African slave-trade to be protected, at what- 
ever expense of blood and treasure ? Is the supreme Execu- 
tive Chief of this commonwealth yet to speak not for himself, 
but for her whole people, and pledge them to shoulder their 
muskets, and to endorse their knapsacks, against the fanatical, 
non-resistant abolitionists, whenever the overseers may please 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 401 

to raise the bloody flag with the swimlling watcli-word of 
'Union'? 0, my friends, I have not the heart to join iit tho 
festivity on the First of August — the British anniversarj' uf 
disenthralled humanity — while all this, and inlinitely mure 
that I could tell, but that I would spare the blushes of my 
couutiy, weigh down my spirits with the uncertainty, sinking 
into my grave as I am, whether she is doomed to be num- 
bered among the first liberators or the last oppressors of tlie 
race of immortal man ! 

"Let the long-trodden-down African, restored by the cheer- 
ing voice and Christian hand of Britain to his primitive right 
and condition of manhood, clap his hands and shout for joy ou 
the anniversary of the First of August. Let the lordly Briton 
strip off much of his pride on other days of the year, and 
reserve it all for the pride of conscious beneficence on this 
day. What lover of classical learning can read the account in 
Livy, or in Plutarch, of the restoration to freedom of the Gre- 
cian cities by the Roman consul Flaminiua, without feeling 
his bosom heave, and his blood flow cheerily in his veins ? 
The heart leaps with sympathy when we read that, on the first 
proclamation by the herald, the immense assembled multitude, 
in the tumult of astonishment and joy, could scarcely believe 
their own ears, and made him repeat the proclamation, and 
then ' Turn ah certo jam gaudio, fanlu.-^ cum clamorc, plau.'^us est 
ortus, totie.^que repclUus, ut facile appararet nihil omnium bono- 
rum mulUludini gralius quam Ubertalem esse. — Then rang the 
welkin with long and redoubled shouts of exultation, clearly 
proving that, of all the enjoyments accessible to the hearts of 
men, nothing is so delightful to them as liberty.' Upwards 
of two thousand years have revolved since that day, and the 
First of August is to the Briton of this age what tiie day nf 
the proclamation of Flaminius was to the ancient Roman. 
Yes 1 let them celebrate the First of August as the day to 
them of deliverance and glory ; and leave to us the pleasant 
employment of commenting upon their motives, of devising 
means to shelter the African slaver from their search, and of 
squandering millions to support, on a pestilential coast, a 
squadron of the stripes and stars, with instructions sooner to 
26 



402 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

scuttle their ships than to molest the pirate slaver who shall 
make his flagstaff the herald of a lie ! " 

la July, 1843, the Cincinnati Astronomical Society 
earnestly solicited Mr. Adams to lay the comer-stone 
of their Observatory. No invitation could have been 
more coincident with the prevailing interest of his 
heart, and he immediately accepted it, notwithstand- 
ing his advanced age, and the great distance which 
the performance of the duty required him to travel. 
Some of his constituents having questioned the propri- 
ety of this acceptance, and expressed doubts whether 
the duties it imposed were compatible with his other 
public obligations, Mr. Adams, in an address to them, 
at Dedham, on the 4th of July, took occasion to state 
that the encouragement of the arts and sciences, and 
of all good literature, is expressly enjoined by the 
constitution of Massachusetts. The patronage and 
encourngenient of them is therefore one of the most 
sacred duties of the people of that state, and enjoined 
upon them and their children as a part of their duty 
to God. " The voices of your forefathers, founders 
of your social compact, calling from their graves, com- 
mand you to this duty ; and I deem it, as your repre- 
sentative, a tacit and standing instruction from you t) 
perform, as far as may be my ability, that part of your 
constitutional duty for you. It is in this sense that, 
in accepting the earnest invitation from a respectable 
and learned society, in a far distant state an.l city of 
the Union, to unite with them in the act of erecting 
an edifice for the observation of the heavens, and 
thereby encouraging the science of astronomy, I am 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 4U3 

falfiUing an obligation of duty to you, aihl in voiii 
service." The nature of this duty he thus iUustnites 

"From the Ptolemies of Egypt ami AloxaiKlcr of Macedon. 
from Julius Ceesar to the Arabian Caliphs Haroun al Itascliid 
Almamon, and Almansor, from Alphonso of Castile to NicholaM, 
the present Emperor of all the Russsiiis, — who, at the expeiino 
of one million of rubles, has erected at Tulkuva the must per- 
fect and best-appointed observatury in the world, — royal and 
imperial power has never been exercised with more jrlory, 
never more remembered with the applause and gratitude of 
mankind, than when extending the hand of patronage and 
encouragement to the science of astronomy. You have noi- 
ther Caisar nor Czar, Caliph, Emperor, nor King, to mon(>pi>li/.o 
this glory by largesses extracted from the fruits of your indus- 
try. The founders of your constitution have left it as their 
dying commandment to you, to achieve, as the lawful sover- 
eigns of the land, this resplendent glory to yourselves — to 
patronize and encourage the arts and sciences, and all good 
literature." 

Mr. Adams left Quincy for Cincinnati on the 25th 
of October, and returned to Washington on the 24th 
of November. At Saratoga, Rochester, BulTalo, ho 
was received -with marked attention ; and in every 
place where he rested assemblages of the inhabitants 
took occasion to evidence their respect and interest in 
his character by congratulatory addresses, and wel- 
comed his presence by every token of civility and 
regard. At Columbus he was met by a deputation 
from Cincinnati, and, in ap[)roaching that city, he 
was escorted into it by a procession and cavalcade. 
No demonstration of honor and gratituile for the exer- 
tion he had made, and the fatigues he had undergone, 



4:04 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

for their gratification, was omitted. His whole prog- 
ress was an ovation. 

In the presence of a large concourse of the citizens 
of Cincinnati, Mr. Adams was introduced to the Astro- 
nomical Society by its president, Judge Burnet, who 
gave, in an appropriate address, a rapid sketch of the 
history of his life and his public services, touching 
with delicacy and judgment on the trials to which 
his political course had been subjected. The follow- 
ing tributes, from their truth, justice, and appropri- 
ateness, are entitled to distinct remembrance : 

" Being a son of one of the framers and defenders of the 
Declaration of Independence, his political principles were 
formed in the school of the sages of the Revolution, from 
whom he imbibed the spirit of liberty while he was yet a boy. 

"Having been brought up among the immediate descend- 
ants of the Puritan fathers, whose landing in Massachusetts 
in the winter of 1620 gave immortality to the rock of Plymouth, 
his moral and religious impressions were derived from a source 
of the most rigid purity ; and his manners and habits wore 
formed in a community where ostentation and extravagance 
had no place. In this fact we see why it is that he has always 
been distinguished for his purity of motive, simplicity of man- 
ners, and republican plainness in his style of living and in his 
intercourse with society. To the same causes may be ascribed 
liis firmness, his directness of purpose, and his unyielding 
adherence to personal as well as political liberty. You have 
recently seen him stand as unmoved as the rock of Gibraltar, 
defending the right of petition, and the constitutional privi- 
leges of the representatives of the people, assembled in Con- 
gress, though fiercely assailed by friends and by foes. 

" It is a remarkable fact that during the whole of his public 
life, which has already continued more than half a century, he 
never connected himself with a political party, or held himself 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 405 

bound to support or oppose any measure for the purpose o' 
advancing or retarding the views of a party ; but he has held 
himself free at all times to pursue the course which duty 
pointed out, however he may have been considered by some 
as adhering to a party. This fact discloses the reason why ho 
has been applauded at times, and at other times censured, by 
every party which has existed under the government. The 
truth is that, while the American people have been divided 
into two great political sections, each contending for its own 
aggrandizement, Mr. Adams has stood between them, unintlu- 
enced by either, contending for the aggrandizement of the 
nation. His life has been in some respects sui generis ; and I 
venture the opinion that, generally, when his course has dif- 
fered most from the politicians opposed to him, it has tended 
most to the advancement of the public good. 

" As a proof of the desire Mr. Adams has always cherished 
for the advancement of science, I might refer to his annual 
message to Congress in December, 1825, in which he recom- 
mended the establishment of a National University, and an 
Astronomical Observatory, and referred to the hundred and 
thirty of those ' light-houses of the skies ' existing in Europe, 
as casting a reproach on our country for its unpardonable neg- 
ligence on that important subject. The manner in which that 
recommendation was received and treated can never be forgot- 
ten. It must at this day be a source of great comfort to that 
devoted friend of science that those who yet sui-vive of the 
highly-excited party which attempted to cast on him reproach 
and ridicule for that proposition, and especially for assimilat- 
ing those establishments to light-houses of the skies, have 
recently admitted the wisdom of his advice by making ample 
appropriations to accomplish the very object he then pro- 
posed." 

The oration Mr. Adams delivered on that occasion 
is, perhaps, the most extraordinary of his literary 
efforts, evidencing his comprehensive grasp of the 
subject, and the intensity of his interest in it. It 



406 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

embraces an outline of the history of astronomy, illus- 
trated by an elevated and excited spirit of philosophy. 
Those who cultivated, those who patronized, and those 
who advanced it, are celebrated, and the events of 
their lives and the nature of their services are briefly 
related. The operations of the mind which are essen- 
tial to its progress are touched upon. The intense 
labor and peculiar intellectual qualifications incident to 
and required for its successful pursuit are intimated. 
Nor are the inventors of those optical instruments, 
who had contributed to the advancement of this sci- 
ence beyond all previous anticipation, omitted in this 
extensive survey of its nature, progress, and history. 

After celebrating " the gigantic energies and more 
than heroic labors of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kep- 
ler, and Galileo," he pronounced Newton " the con- 
summation of them all." 

"It was his good fortune," observed Mr. Adams, 
" to be born and to live in a country where there was no 
college of cardinals to cast him into prison, and doom 
him to spend his days in repeating the seven peniten- 
tial psalms, for shedding light upon the world, and 
publishing mathematical truths. Newton was not per- 
secuted by the dull and ignorant instruments of politi- 
cal or ecclesiastical power. He lived in honor among 
his countrymen ; was a member of one Parliament, 
received the dignity of knighthood, held for many 
years a lucrative office, and at his decease was interred 
in solemn state in Westminster Abbey, where a monu- 
ment records his services to mankind, among the sep- 
ulchres of the British kings. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 407 



(( 



From the days of Newton down to the present 
hour, the science of astronomy has been cultivated, 
with daily deepening interest, by all the civilized 
nations of Europe — by England, France, Prussia, 
Sweden, several of the German and Italian states, and, 
above all, by Russia, whose present sovereign has made 
the pursuit of knowledge a truly imperial virtue." 

After speaking of the patronage extended to this 
science by the nations and sovereigns of Europe, he 
terminates his developments with this stirring appeal 
to his own countrymen : 

" But what, in the mean time, have we been doing ? While 
our fathers were colonists of England we had no distinctive 
political or literary character. The white cliffs of Albion cov- 
ered the soil of our nativity, though another hemisphere first 
opened our eyes on the light of day, and oceans rolled between 
us and them. We were Britons born, and we claimed to be 
the countrymen of Chaucer and Shakspeare, Milton and New- 
ton, Sidney and Locke, Arthur and Alfred, as well as of 
Edward the Black Prince, Harry of Monmouth, and Elizabeth. 
But when our fathers abjured the name of Britons, and 
' assumed among the nations of the earth the separate and 
equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God 
entitled them,' they tacitly contracted the engagement for 
themselves, and above all for their posterity, to contribute, in 
their corporate and national capacity, their full share, ay, and 
more than their full share, of the virtues that elevate and of 
the graces that adorn the character of civilized man. They 
announced themselves as reformers of the institution of civil 
society. They spoke of the laws of nature, and in the name 
of nature's God ; and by that sacred adjuration they pledged 
us, their children, to labor with united and concerted energy, 
from the cradle to the grave, to purge the earth of all slavery ; 
to restore the race of man to the full enjoyment of those 



408 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

rights which the God of nature had bestowed upon him at his 
birth ; to disenthrall his limbs from chains, to break the fet- 
ters from his feet and the manacles from his hands, and set 
him free for the use of all his physical powers for the improve- 
ment of his own condition. The God in whose name they 
spoke had taught them, in the revelation of the Gospel, that 
the only way in which man can discharge his duty to Him is 
by loving his neighbor as himself, and doing with him as he 
would be done by ; respecting his rights while enjoying his 
own, and applying all his emancipated powers of body and of 
mind to self-improvement and the improvement of his race." 



CHAPTER XIV. 

REPORT ON THE RESOLVES OF THE LEGISLATURE OF MAS3ACUUSETT8 
PROPOSING AN AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED 

STATES IN EFFECT TO ABOLISH A REPRESENTATION FOR SLAVES. 

FOURTH REPORT ON JAMES SMITHSON'S BEQUEST. INFLUENCE OF 

MR. ADAMS ON THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE NATIONAL OBSERVA- 
TORY AND THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION. GENERAL JACKSON'3 

CHARGE THAT THE RIO GRANDE MIGHT HAVE BEEN OBTAINED, UNDER 
THE SPANISH TREATY, AS A BOUNDARY FOR THE UNITED STATES, 
REFUTED. ADDRESS TO HIS CONSTITUENTS AT WEYMOUTH. RE- 
MARKS ON THE RETROCESSION OF ALEXANDRIA TO VIRGINIA. — HIS 

PARALYSIS. RECEPTION BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 

HIS DEATH. FUNERAL HONORS. TRIBUTE TO HIS MEMORY. 

In April, 1844, certain resolves of the Legislature 
of Massachusetts, proposing to Congress to recommend, 
according to the provisions of the fifth article of the 
constitution of the United States, an amendment to 
the said constitution, in effect abolishing the repre- 
sentation for slaves, being under consideration, and a 
report adverse to such amendment having been made 
by a majority of the committee, Mr. Adams, and Mr. 
Giddings, of Ohio, being a minority, united in a report, 
in which, concurring in the opinion of the majority so fir 
as to believe that it was not, at that time, expedient 
to recommend the amendment proposed by the Legis- 
lature of Massachusetts, they were compelled to dissent 
from the views and the reasons which had actuated 
them in coming to that conclusion. 

(409) 



410 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

"The subscribers are under a deep and solemn conviction 
that the provision in the constitution of the United States, 
as it has been and yet is construed, and which the resolves of 
the Legislature of Massachusetts propose to discard and erase 
therefrom, is repugnant to the first and vital principles of 
republican popular representation ; to the self-evident truths 
proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence ; to the letter 
and spirit of the constitution of the United States itself; to 
the letter and spirit of the constitutions of almost all the states 
in the Union ; to the liberties of the whole people of all the 
free states, and of all that portion of the people of the states 
where domestic slavery is established, other than owners of 
the slaves themselves ; that this is its essential and unextin- 
guishable character in principle, and that its fruits, in its prac- 
tical operation upon the government of the land, as felt 
with daily increasing aggravation by the people, correspond 
with that character. To place these truths in the clearest 
light of demonstration, and beyond the reach of contradiction, 
the subscribers proceed, in the order of these averments, to 
adduce the facts and the arguments by which they will be 
maintained," 

The report then proceeds, in reply to the reasoning 
of the majority of the committee, to maintain that 
*' the principle of republican popular representation 
is that the terms of representative and constituent are 
correlative ; " that " democracy admits no representa- 
tion of property ; ' ' that ' ' the slave representation is 
repugnant to the self-evident truths proclaimed in the 
Declaration of Independence." The truths in that 
Declaration the report illustrates from history, from 
Scripture, and from the teachings of Jesus Christ ; 
who was aware that wars, and their attendant, slavery, 
would continue among men, and that the destiny of 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 411 

his Gospel itself was often to be indebted for its pro- 
gressive advancement to war. 

"'I came not/ said he, 'to send peace upon earth, but a 
sword ;' meaning, not that this was the object of his mission, 
but that, in the purposes of the Divine nature, war itself 
should be made instrumental to promote the final consumma- 
tion of universal peace. Slavery has not ceased upon the 
earth ; but the impression upon the human heart and mind 
that slavery is a wrong, — a crime against the laws of nature 
and of nature's God, — has been deepening and widening, till 
it may now be pronounced universal upon every soul in Chiis- 
tendom not warped by personal interest, or tainted with dis- 
belief in Christianity. The owner of ten slaves believes that 
slavery is not an evil. The owner of a hundred believes it a 
blessing. The philosophical infidel has no faith in Hebrew 
prophecies, or in the Gospel of Jesus. lie says in his heart, 
though he will not tell you to your face, that the proclamation 
of the natural equality of mankind, in the Declaration of Inde- 
pendence, is untrue ; that the African race are physically, mor- 
ally, and intellectually, inferior to the white European man ; 
tliat they are not of one blood, nor descendants of the same 
stock ; that the African is born to be a slave, and the white 
man to be his master. The worshipper of mammon and the 
philosophical atheist hold no communion with the signers of 
the declaration that all men are created equal, and endowed 
b}'' their Creator with unalienable rights. But, with these 
exceptions, poll the whole mass of Christian men, of every 
name, sect, or denomination, throughout the globe, and you 
will not hear a solitary voice deny that slavery is a wrong, a 
crime, and a curse." 

This report then proceeds to maintain that the rep- 
resentation of slaves as persons, conferred not upon 
themselves but their owners, is repugnant to the 
self-evident truth proclaimed in the Declaration of 



412 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

Independence, and equally repugnant both to the spirit 
and letter of the constitution of the United States, 
and to the constitution of almost every state of the 
Union ; that it is deceptive, and inconsistent with 
the principle of popular representation ; — all which 
is supported by reference to the writings of Thomas 
Jefferson, a slaveholder, concerning the relations of 
master and slave. It is shown how, by the effect of 
that article in the constitution, all political power in 
the states is absorbed and engrossed by the owners of 
slaves, and the cunning by which this has been effected 
is explained. The report then enters into the history 
of slavery, declaring that "the resolves of the Legis- 
lature of Massachusetts speak the unanimous opinions 
and sentiments of the people — unanimous, with the 
exception of the sordid souls linked to the cause of 
slavery by the hopes and expectations of patronage." 
In June, 1844, Mr. Adams, as chairman of a select 
committee on the Smithsonian fund, reported a bill, 
in which he referred to its actual state, and proposed 
measures tending to give immediate operation to that 
bequest. In support of its provisions, he stated that, 
on the first day of September, 1838, there had been 
deposited in the mint of the United States, in gold, 
half a million of dollars, — the full amount of the 
bequest of Mr. Smithson, — which, on the same day, 
under the authority of an act of Congress, and with 
the approbation of the President, had been vested by 
the Secretary of the Treasury in bonds of the States 
of Arkansas, Michigan, and Illinois ; that the pay- 
ment of the interest on these bonds had been almost 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 413 

entirely neglected ; that the principal and arrears of 
interest then accumulating amounted to upwards of six 
hundred and ninety-nine thousand dollars ; that the 
payment of these bonds was remote, and unavailable 
by Congress for application to the objects of this 
bequest. 

In accepting this legacy, the faith of the United 
States had been pledged that all money received from 
it should be applied to the humane and generous pur- 
pose prescribed by the testator ; and he contended 
that, for the redemption of this pledge, it was indis- 
pensably requisite that the funds thus locked up in the 
treasury, in bonds of these states, with the accruing 
and suspended interest thereon, should be made avail- 
able for the disposal of Congress, to enable them to 
execute the sacred trust they had assumed. 

The committee then reported a bill providing, in 
effect, for the assumption by Congress of the whole 
sum and interest, as a loan to the United States, 
invested in their stock, bearing an annual interest of 
six per cent., payable half-yearly, and redeemable at 
the pleasure of Congress by the substitution of other 
funds of equal value. In connection with this pur 
pose they reported a bill making appropriations to 
enable Congress to proceed immediately to the exe- 
cution of the trust committed to them by the testator, 
and for the fulfilment of which the faith of the nation 
had been pledged. 

In specifying the objects to which it should be 
applied, that of the establishment of an Astronomical 
Observatory was not omitted. This recommendation 



414 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

flecided the fate of the bill ; for there was no purpose 
on which the predominating party were more fixed 
than to prevent the gratification of Mr. Adams in this 
well-known cherished wish of his heart. 

In October, 1823, Mr. Adams, being then Secretary 
of State, had addressed a letter to a member of the 
corporation of Harvard University, urging the erection 
of an Astronomical Observatory in connection with that 
institution, and tendering a subscription, on his own 
account, of one thousand dollars, on condition a requi- 
site sum should be raised, for that purpose, within 
two years. His proposal not meeting correspondent 
spirit among the friends of science at that time, in 
October, 1825, he renewed the offer, on the same 
condition and limitation. In both cases a conceal- 
ment of his name was made imperative.* 

The establishment of an Astronomical Observatory 
was recommended in his first message to Congress, as 
President of the United States ; but the proposition 
fell on a political soil glowing with a red heat, enkin- 
dled by disappointed ambition. Opposition to the 
design became identified with party spirit, and to 
defeat it no language of contempt or of ridicule was 
omitted by the partisans of General Jackson. In 
every appropriation which it was apprehended might 
be converted to its accomplishment, the restriction 
'■'■and to no other*' was carefully inserted. In the 
second section of an act passed on the 10th of July, 
1832, providing for the survey of the coasts of the 
United States, the following limitation was inserted : 

* Quincy's History of Harvard University, vol. ii., p. 567. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS 415 

" Provided that nothing in this act, or in the act herehj 
revived^ shall be construed to authorize the construction 
or maintenance of a permanent Astronomical Observa- 
tory." Yet, at the time of passing this act, it was 
well understood that the appropriation it contained 
was to be applied to that object ; and subsequently, in 
direct defiance of this prohibition, Congress permit- 
ted that and other appropriations to be applied to the 
erection of an Astronomical Observatory in the city of 
Washington, to which annual appropriations were suc- 
cessively granted in the bill providing for the navy 
department ; the authors of the proviso being aware 
of the uses to which the fund would be applied, but 
causing its insertion for the purpose of preventing its 
erection from being attributed to the influence of ^Ir. 
Adams. To such disreputable subterfuges party spirit 
can condescend, to gratify malignity, or to obscure 
merit from the knowledge of the world, to the power 
of which it is itself compelled to yield. 

Nothing was effectually done, on the subject of the 
Smithsonian fund, until the 22d of April, 184G, when 
a bill to carry into effect that bequest was reported by 
Mr. Owen, of Indiana, and earnestly supported by 
him and others. In its important general features 
it coincided with the views of Mr. Adams, except 
only that it made no provision for an Astronomical 
Observatory. After various amendments, it received 
the sanction of both houses of Congress, Mr. Adams 
voting in its favor. On the 10th of August, 1846, it 
received the signature of the President of the United 
States. 



416 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

During the debate upon this bill, its supporters 
acknowledged *' that Mr. Adams had labored in this 
good cause with more zeal and perseverance than any 
other man." 

In the course of the same debate it was said by one 
member that, " inasmuch as the views of Mr. Adams 
had been carried out in respect of an Astronomical 
Observatory, by the government, in the District of 
Columbia," — and by another, that, "as building 
light-houses in the skies had grown into popular 
favor," — it was hoped he would find no difficulty in 
giving his vote for the bill. On which Mr. Adams 
observed, that "he was very glad to hear that the 
' building light-houses in the skies had grown into pop- 
ular favor.' The appropriation for this Astronomical 
Observatory had been clandestinely smuggled into the 
law, under the head of a dt^pot for charts, when, a 
short time before, a provision had been inserted in a 
bill passed that no appropriation should be applied to 
an Astronomical Observatory. He claimed no merit 
for the erection of an Astronomical Observatory, but, 
in the course of his whole life, no conferring of honor, 
of interest, or of office, had given him more delight 
than the belief that he had contributed, in some small 
degree, to produce these Astronomical Observatories 
both here and elsewhere.* He no longer wished any 
portion of the Smithsonian fund to be applied to an 
Astronomical Observatory." 

Notwithstanding this disclaimer, the four reports of 
Mr. Adams, on the Smithsonian fund, in 1836, 1840, 

♦ Congressional Globe, vol XV., p. 738. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 417" 

1842, and 1844, which were neither coincident with 
the views nor within the comprehension of his oppo- 
nents, will remain imperishable monuments of the ex- 
tent and elevation of his mind on this subject. "When 
the continued and strenuous exertions with which Mr. 
Adams opposed, at every step, the efforts to con- 
vert that fund to projects of personal interest or 
ambition are appreciated, it will be evident that 
the people of the United States owe to him what- 
ever benefit may result from the munificence of 
James Smithson. History will be just to his mem- 
ory, and will not fail to record his early interest 
and strenuous zeal for the advancement of astro- 
nomical science, and the influence his eloquence and 
untiring perseverance, in illustrating its importance 
with an unsurpassed array of appropriate learning, 
exerted on the public mind in the United States, 
not only in effecting the establishment of other Astro- 
nomical Observatories, but absolutely compelling party 
spirit, notwithstanding its open, bitter animosity, to 
lay the foundation of that Observatory which now 
bears the name of *' National." 

In February, 1843, Andrew Jackson addressed a 
letter to Aaron Vail Brown, a member of Congress, 
strongly recommending the annexation of Texas, and 
giving his reasons for that measure, which he com- 
menced by stating the following facts : 

" Soon after my election, in 1829, it was made known to me 
by Mr. Erwin, formerly our minister at the court of Madrid, 
that whilst at that court he had laid the foundation of a treaty 
with Spain for the cession of the Floridas, and the settlement 

27 



418 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

of the boundary of Louisiana, fixing the westerr limit of the 
latter at the Rio Grande, agreeably to the understanding of 
France ; that he had written home to our government for 
power to complete and sign this negotiation ; but that, instead 
of receiving such authority, the negotiation was taken out of 
his hands, and transferred to Washington, and a new treaty 
was there concluded, by which the Sabine, and not the Rio 
Grande, was recognized and established as the boundary of 
Louisiana. Finding that these statements were true, and that 
our government did really give up that important territory, 
when it was at its option to retain it, I was filled with astonish- 
ment. The right to the territory was obtained from France, 
Spain stood ready to acknowledge it to the Rio Grande, and 
yet the authority asked by our minister to insert the true 
boundary was not only withheld, but, in lieu of it, a limit waa 
adopted which stripped us of the whole vast country lying 
between the two rivers." 

The letter containing this statement Aaron Yail 
Brown kept concealed from the public until March, 
1844, when he gave it publicity to counteract a letter 
from Mr. Webster against the annexation of Texas to 
the United States. This statement of Andrew Jack- 
son having thus been brought to the knowledge of 
Mr. Adams, he took occasion, on the 7th of October 
in that year, in an address to a political society of 
young men in Boston, to contradict and expose it in 
the following terms : 

" I have read the whole of this letter to you, for I intend to 
prolong its existence for the benefit of posterity." [After 
reading the above extract from the letter of Andrew Jackson, 
Mr. Adams proceeds.] "He was filled with astonishment, 
fellow-citizens I I am repeating to you the words of a man 
who has been eight years President of the United States ; 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 419 

words deliberately written, and published to the world more 
than a year after they were written ; words importing a state- 
ment of his conduct in his office as chief magistrate of this 
Union ; words impeaching of treason the government of his 
predecessor, James Monroe, and in an especial manner, though 
without daring to name him, the Secretary of State, — a gov- 
ernment to which he (Andrew Jackson) was under deep obli- 
gations of gratitude. 

" In what language of composure or of decency can I say 
to you that there is in this bitter and venomous charge not 
one single word of truth ; that it is from beginning to end 
grossly, glaringly, wilfully false? — false even in the name of 
the man from whom he pretends to have derived liis informa- 
tion. There never was a minister of the United States in 
Spain by the name of Ervvin. The name of the man who went 
to him on this honorable errand, soon after his election in 1829, 
was George W. Erving, of whom and of whose revelations I 
shall also have something to say. I do not charge this distor- 
tion of the name as wilfully made ; but it shows how care- 
lessly and loosely all his relations and intercourse with him 
hung upon his memory, and how little he cared for the man. 

" The blunder of the name, however, is in itself a matter of 
little moment. Mr. George W. Erving never did make to 
Mr. Jackson any such communication as he pretends to have 
found true, aTid to have filled him with astonishment. Mr. 
Erving never did pretend, nor will he dare to affirm, that he 
had laid the foundation of a treaty with Spain for the cession 
of the Floridas, and the settlement of the boundary of Lou- 
isiana, fixing the western limit at the Rio Grande. The charge, 
therefore, that our government did really give up that import- 
ant territory, when it was at its option to retain it, is purely 
and unqualifiedly untrue ; and I now charge that it was known 
by Mr. Brown to be so when he published General Jackson's 
letter; for, in the postscript to Jackson's letter, he says 'the 
papers furnished by Mr. Erwin, to which he had referred in it, 
could be placed in Mr. Brown's possession, if desired.' 

"They were accordingly placed in Mr. Brown's possession, 
who, when he published Jackson's letter to the Globe, alluding 



420 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

to this passage asserting that Erving had laid the foundation 
of a treaty with Spain, fixing the western limit at the Rio 
Grande, otherwise called the Rio del Norte, subjoined the fol- 
lowing note : ' That this boundary could have been obtained 
was doubtless the belief of our minister ; hut the offer of the 
Spanish government ivas prohabhj to the Colorado — certainly a 
line far ivest of the Sabine.' 

" This is the note of Aaron Vail Brown, and my fellow-citi- 
zens will please to observe, — 

" First, That it blows to atoms the whole statement of An- 
drew Jackson that Erving had laid the foundation of a treaty 
by which our western bounds upon the Spanish possessions 
should be at the Rio Grande ; and, of course, grinds to impal- 
pable powder his charge that our government did give up that 
irapoi'tant territory when it was at its option to retain it. 

" Secondly, That this note of Aaron Vail Brown, while it so 
effectually demolishes Jackson's fable of Erving's treaty with 
Spain for the boundary of the Rio del Norte, and his libellous 
charge against our government for surrendering the territory 
which they had the option to retain, is, with this exception, 
as wide and as wilful a departure from the truth as the cal- 
umny of Jackson itself, which it indirectly contradicts." 

Mr. Adams then enters into a lucid and elaborate 
statement of Erving's connection with this negotia- 
tion with the Spanish government, with minute and 
important illustrations, highly interesting and con- 
clusive ; severely animadverting upon the conduct of 
General Jackson and Mr. Brown. He says : 

"The object of the publication of that letter of Andrew- 
Jackson was to trump up a shadow of argument for a pre- 
tended reiinnexation of Texas to the United States, by a fabu- 
lous pretension that it had been treacherously surrendered to 
Spain, in the Florida treaty of 1819, by our government, — 
meaning thereby the Secretary of State of that day, John 
Quincy Adams, — in return for greater obligations than any 



MEMOIR OF JOUN QUINCY ADAMS. 421 

one public servant of this nation was over indebted for to 
another. The argument for the annexation, or reiinnexation, 
of Texas is as gross an imposture as ever was palmed upon 
the credulity of an honest people." 

In conclusion Mr. Adams addresses in a serious 
and excitin*^ strain of eloquence the young men of 
Boston ; and, after recapitulating part of an oration 
which he delivered on the 4th of July, 1793, before 
their fathers and forefathers, in that city, he closes 
thus : 

"Young men of Boston, the generations of men to whom 
fifty-one years bygone I gave this solemn pledge have passed 
entirely awa}'. They in whose name I gave it are, like him 
who addresses you, dropping into the grave. But they have 
redeemed their and my pledge. They were your fathers, and 
they have maintained the freedom transmitted to them by their 
sires of the war of independence. They have transmitted 
that freedom to you ; and upon you now devolves the duty of 
transmitting it unimpaired to j^our posterity. Your trial is 
approaching. The spirit of freedom and the spirit of slavery 
are drawing together for the deadly conflict of arms. The 
aimexation of Texas to this Union is the blast of a trumpet for 
a foreign, civil, servile, and Indian war, of which the govern- 
ment of your country, fallen into faithless hands, have already 
twice given the signal : first by a shameless treaty, rejected 
by a virtuous Senate ; and again by the glove of defiance hurled 
by the apostle of nullification at the avowed policy of the 
British empire peacefully to promote the extinction of slavery 
throughout the world. Young men of Boston, burnish your 
armor — prepare for the conflict ; and I say to you, in the lan- 
guage of Galgacus to the ancient Britons, 'Think of youf 
forefathers ! think of your posterity ! ' " * 

On the 30th of the same month Mr. Adams deliv- 

* Mies' j\''ational Register, Second Series, vol. xvii., pp. lOG — 111. 



422 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

ered to his constituents at Weymouth an address 
equally elaborate, comprehensive, and historical, in a 
like fervid and characteristic spirit,* which thus con- 
cludes : 

" Texas and slavery are interwoven in every banner float- 
ing- on the Democratic bx-eeze. ' Freedom or death ' should be 
inscribed on ours. A war for slavery ! Can you enlist under 
such a standard ? May the Ruler of the universe preserve 
you from such degradation ! ' Freedom ! Peace 1 Union ! ' be 
this the watchword of your camp ; and if Ate, hot from hell, 
will come and cry ' Havoc ! ' fight — fight and conquer, under 
the banner of universal freedom." 

In February, 1845, our title to Oregon being the 
subject of debate in Congress, Mr. Adams joined in 
it, displaying his full knowledge of the subject, and 
declaring that it was time to give notice to Great 
Britain that the affair must be settled. He was desir- 
ous as any man to bring this subject to an issue, but 
he did not wish to enter upon the discussion of this 
matter before the world until we could show that we 
had the best of the argument. lie wished to have 
the reasons given to the world far our taking posses- 
sion of seven degrees of latitude, and perhaps more : 
and whenever we took it, too, he hoped we should 
have it defined geographically, defined politically, and, 
more than all the rest, defined morally ; and then, if 
we came to question with Great Britain, we should 
say, " Come on, Macduff! " In answer to the in- 
quiry who had been the means of giving this coun- 
try a title to Oregon, Mr. Adams answered, it was a 

* JViles' JValional Register, Second Series, vol. yvn., pp. 154 — 169. 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 423 

citizen of Massachusetts that discovered the Columbia 
River ; and that he (Mr. Adams) had the credit of 
inserting the chxuse in the treaty on which our right 
was based. If it had not been for the attacks which 
had been made upon him, the fact would have gone 
with him to the grave. 

In February, 1845, in a speech on the army bill, 
he treated ironically the spirit of conquest then mani- 
festing itself towards Mexico, Oregon, and California. 
He said, at some future day we might hear the Speaker 
not only announce on this floor ' ' the gentleman from 
the Rocky Mountains," or " the gentleman from the 
Pacific," or " the gentleman from Patagonia," but 
" the gentleman from the North Pole," and also " the 
gentleman from the South Pole ; " and the poor orig- 
inal thirteen states would dwindle into comparative 
insignificance as parts of this mighty republic. 

In November, 1845, in answer to a letter soliciting 
his opinion on the constitutionality of the law of Con- 
gress retroceding Alexandria to Virginia, Mr. Adams 
replied : "I have no hesitation to say I hold that act 
unconstitutional and void. How the Supreme Court 
of the United States would consider it I cannot under- 
take to judge, nor how they would carry it into execu- 
tion, should they determine the act unconstitutional. 
The constitution of the United States * Stat magna 
numinis umbra.* " 

In the great debate on the Oregon question, which 
commenced in January, 1846, the intellectual power 
of Mr. Adams, and the extent and accuracy of his 
acquaintance with the facts connected with that sub- 



424 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

jecfc, were preeminently manifested. Though con- 
scious, being then in his seventy-eighth year, that he 
stood on the threshold of human life, he sought no 
relaxation from duty, no exemption from its perform- 
ance. To counteract the effect of a nervous tremor, 
to which he was constitutionally subject, he used for 
many years an instrument to steady his hand when 
writing, on the ivory label of which he inscribed the 
motto " Toil and trust," indicative of the determined 
will, which had characterized his whole life, " to 
scorn delights and live laborious days." His step, 
however, now became more feeble, and his voice less 
audible, but his indomitable spirit never failed to up- 
lift him in defence of liberty and the constitution of 
his country, when assailed. 

In a debate on the Oregon question, in August, 
1846, when Mr. Adams arose to speak, the hall was 
found too extensive for the state of his voice, and the 
members rushed to hear him, filling the area in front 
of the Speaker. That officer, in behalf of the few who 
remained in their seats, called the house to order, and 
Mr. Adams continued his remarks with his accustomed 
clearness and energy. 

At the close of the session, in 1846, he returned to 
his seat in Quincy, with unimpaired intellectual pow- 
ers, and with no perceptible symptom of immediately 
declining health, until the 19th of November, when, 
walking in the streets of Boston, an attack of paraly- 
sis deprived him of the power of speech, and affected 
his right side. In the course of three months, how- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 425 

ever, he was sufficiently recovered to resume his official 
duties at Washington. 

On the 16th of February, 1847, as he entered the 
Hall of the House of Representatives for the first time 
since his illness, the house rose as one man, business 
was at once suspended, his usual seat surrendered to 
him by the gentleman to whom it had been assigned, 
and he was formally conducted to it by two members. 
After resuming it, Mr. Adams expressed his thnnks 
to the member who had voluntarily relincj^uished his 
right in his favor, and said : " Had I a more power- 
ful voice, I might respond to the congratulations of 
my friends, and the members of this house, for the 
honor which has been done me. But, enfeebled as I 
am by disease, I beg you will excuse me." 

After this period, on one occasion alone he addressed 
the house. On the refusal of President Polk to give 
information, on their demand, as to the objects of the 
then existing war with Mexico, and the instructions 
given by the Executive relative to negotiations for 
peace, Mr. Adams rose, and maintained the constitu- 
tional power of the house to call for that information ; 
denying that in this case the refusal was justified by 
that of President Washington on a similar demand ; 
and declaring that the house ought to sustain, in the 
strongest manner, their right to call for information 
upon questions in which war and peace were con- 
cerned. 

From this time, though daily in his seat in the 
House of Representatives, he took no part in de- 
bate. On the 21st of February, 1848, he answered 



426 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

to the call of his name in a voice clear and emphatic. 
Soon after, he rose, with a paper in his hand, and 
addressed the Speaker, when paralysis returned, and, 
uttering the words, " This is the last of earth ; I am 
content," he fell into the arms of the occupant of an 
adjoining seat, who sprang to his aid. The house 
immediately adjourned. The members, greatly agi- 
tated, closed around him, until dispersed by their 
associates of the medical faculty, who conveyed him 
to a sofa in the rotundo, and from thence, at the 
request of the Speaker of the House of Representa- 
tives, Robert C. Winthrop, he was removed to the 
Speaker's apartment in the capitol. There Mrs. Ad- 
ams and his family were summoned to his side, and 
he continued, sedulously watched and attended, in a 
state of almost entire insensibility, until the evening 
of the 23d of February, when his spirit peacefully 
departed. 

The gate of fear and envy was now shut ; that of 
honor and fime opened. Men of all parties united in 
just tributes to the memory of John Quincy Adams. 
The halls of Congress resounded with voices of apt 
eulogy. After a pathetic discourse by the Chaplain 
of the House of Representatives, the remains of the 
departed statesman were followed by his family and 
immediate friends, and by the senators and representa- 
tives of the State of Massachusetts, as chief mourners. 
The President of the United States, the heads of 
departments, both branches of the national legisla- 
ture, the members of the executive, judicial, and 
diplomatic corps, the officers of the army and navy, 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 427 

the corporations of all the literary and public societies 
in the District of Columbia, also joined the procession, 
which proceeded with a military escort to the Con- 
gressional cemetery. From thence his remains were 
removed, attended by thirty members of the House 
of Representatives, — one from each state in the 
Union, — to Massachusetts. 

Every token of honor and respect was manifested 
in the cities and villages through which they passed. 
In Boston they were received by a committee ap- 
pointed by the Legislature of Massachusetts, and by 
the municipal government ; and, passing through the 
principal streets, were deposited, under care of the 
mayor of the city, in Faneuil Hall, which was appro- 
priately draped in mourning. Here they lay in state 
until the next day, when, attended by the repre- 
sentatives of the nation, the Executive and Legis- 
lature of Massachusetts, and the municipal authorities 
of Boston, they were removed to Quincy, the birth- 
place of Mr. Adams. There, in its Congregational 
church, after an eloquent address,* these national 
tributes to the departed patriot closed, beside the 
sepulchre of his parents, amidst the scenes most famil- 
iar and dear to his heart. 



The life of a statesman second to none in diligent 
and effective preparation for public service, and faith- 
ful and fearless fulfilment of public duty, has now 

* By William P. Lunt, miuister of the First Congregational Church ia 
Quiucy. 



428 MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 

been sketched, chiefly from materials taken from hia 
published works. The light of his own mind has 
been thrown on his labors, motives, principles, and 
spirit. In times better adapted to appreciate his 
worth, his merits and virtues will receive a more 
enduring memorial. The present is not a moment 
propitious to weigh them in a true balance. He knew 
how little a majority of the men of his own time were 
disposed or qualified to estimate his character with 
justice. To a future age he was accustomed to look 
with confidence. ^^ Alteri scecuIo" was the appeal 
made by him through his whole life, and is now 
engraven on his monument. 

The basis of his moral character was the religious 
principle. His spirit of liberty was fostered and 
inspired by the writings of Milton, Sydney, and Locke, 
of which the American Declaration of Independence 
w\as an emanation, and the constitution of the United 
States, with the exception of the clauses conceded to 
slavery, an embodiment. He was the associate of 
statesmen and diplomatists at a crisis when war and 
desolation swept over Europe, when monarchs were 
perplexed with fear of change, and the welfiire of 
the United States was involved in the common dan- 
ger. After leading the councils which restored peace 
, to conflicting nations, he returned to support the ad- 
ministration of a veteran statesman, and then wielded 
the chief powers of the republic with unsurpassed 
purity and steadiness of purpose, energy, and wisdom. 
Removed by faction from the helm of state, he re- 



MEMOIR OF JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 429 

entered the national councils, and, in his old age, 
stood panoplied in the principles of Washington and 
his associates, the ablest and most dreaded cham- 
pion of freedom, until, from the station assigned him 
by his country, he departed, happy in a life devoted 
to duty, in a death crowned with every honor his 
country could bestow, and blessed with the hope which 
inspires those who defend the rights, and uphold, 
when menaced, momentous interests of mankind. 



X39 









O ■ C^ 



^<-. ^ .■ .A- <-■ 



,\ - 







■^ v^- . -^ ,>x ''y- V 






A-^- 






"'J' 



•^./. ,^X 






.^^ 









x^" 


•'^-^^ 






.^^^ 


o^-^~ 




" ' ^ 


. ( 
A ■ 






<•• 




■-/. 




r 






^0 







■ 0- 





"b 0^ 


- 


,\C^ '"'^> 


■■^>-,<x^ : 





^\^ 



A^"^■ 

A 







x^^" -^^ 








o'^"-' '■■- 




"■J- ' '• 


N ' ' 


x^^ 




- %^ 




\' * 






.v^" 


- 


■^ ^^' 




^^. 


^/%i^-0 C . 


^,xV ./v. 


^^ 




^■'/''"^-^ v\^ 




•n 




1 1 ([ < 


0- 




v^ ^.# O 


^...L^ ^ .^ 


-^ 




^- V^ ^ 


.:' ' ■</ 






■•"o 0^ 






\ ^ 




/" 






= >< ■''< 


•^ 






V v^v- •^. 









>• 


^ '•"' / 


■■ ^ ,\\ v 1 ft 








/J 


■-Cp 










' v 










. -v^. 


v^^ 


" \ 












0^ *< 








x^^ 


'-^ 


'.^. 








' 




rj^ 


















x-^" 


/ ^^^ 








■\ 




' ^ 






^ 


<i^ 




..4 






A^^' 


'^^., 






"•r>\ 









'^. '0, 


,.^-,c^ 


4 


^ X 






O. 




•^.. .-x^ 


■C^ 






■x' 


0^ 










o 










• s- 


■u^ 






















' " / -^ 






■':s> 


.^^^ 




\ 



.#■ -. 






.-X \ 



■^^ . 



V. s^ 



A" 



xV^ 



^• -A 



f'. 



'^r 



■^^ 



A-^ '<^> 



->. ,^- 



o'^' 





X ,.v> 


\' 






^'"^ 


"^ 




\_ 




v^ 


J s 






' ^i- 


c^^ 



■v^^- ■'■.. 



,0 o^ 



■'', 



v>' 



,-A' 



, \ 



,^-^- 



-N'^^ 



..'^■~ 



\' 






a\ 



%.^- 






■-. ,,N^^ 



V- V- 



■v- 



^^■> ""^^ 



x"?-' 



A' 






■^X^ 



.V 






A^- 



^ A^ 



■x'^ - ^ ' » * 



'A 



.0^ 









LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




005 470 010 6 



